Patricia F. Bender

Bank of America-PB offers investment strategies primarily involving fixed income securities and specialty asset classes. The firm employs an active approach to bond investing, seeking to take advantage of market volatility, sector rotation, and security selection.

The foundation of BAPB's equity selection process is proprietary research. They use a blend of qualitative and quantitative fundamental research to target large capitalization companies that have long-term growth potential, proven earnings track records, competitive advantages and strong management. Fixed-income investments are tailored to address client-specific needs for income and capital appreciation.

Columbia Management Advisors invests in the US public equity and debt markets. They focus on growth and value stocks of small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap companies selected on the basis of a top-down approach and thematic and fundamental analysis with a bottom-up stock picking approach to create their equity portfolio mix. The firm benchmarks the performance of its equity portfolios against the S&P 500 Index. Columbia Management Advisors invests in short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term high-quality debt instruments including treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, municipal bonds, agency bonds and asset backed securities to create their debt portfolio mix. The firm uses a combination of their equity and debt strategies to manage balanced portfolios and benchmarks performance against the S&P 500 Index and Lehman Aggregate Index. Though not limited by sector, the firm tends to invests in the stocks of large-cap companies in the technology, energy minerals and consumer non-durables sectors. They maintain a low turnover rate.