Brad Beman

Tortoise Investments LLC engages in the provision of investment advisory services. It also offers investment vehicles which includes closed-end, open end, interval, and private funds. The company was founded by H. Kevin Birzer, David J. Schulte, Zachary A. Hamel, Kenneth P. Malvey, and Terry C. Matlack in December 2002 and is headquartered in Leawood, KS.

Tortoise Credit Strategies' non-municipals strategies are constructed to capitalize on an ever-changing economic cycle that influences appreciation and depreciation in different bond sectors over the cycle. Sector allocation, security selection and yield curve strategies are employed in the process and are intended to add value relative to client benchmarks. Their primary strategy involves overweighting and underweighting sectors consistent with a particulareconomic business cycle phase. The decision to avoid sectors that may be overvalued or may have poor credit fundamentals is as important as selection and rotation of sectors that may have favorable credit and valuation trends. Tortoise Credit Strategies' opportunistic approach emphasizes the utilization of traditional fixed income instruments within the various sectors of the bond market.The firm's primary municipals strategy focuses on non-profit essential social and public service providers that operate similarly to for-profit companies with essential assets such as educational facilities, healthcare facilities, housing and infrastructure. Tortoise Credit Strategies utilizes both a top-down and bottom-up investment process which includes an evaluation of fundamentals, technicals, and valuations. Their primary investment strategy is fundamentals-based, long-only, with an emphasis on managing risk. However, Tortoise Credit Strategies' investment strategies may include short-term purchases and trading where appropriate, as indicated by their fundamental and technical analysis.

AUIM believes that the recognition of the asymmetrical nature of risk in the securities market, strong risk management, a long-term perspective and balancing top-down macroeconomic analysis with proprietary bottom-up research as appropriate to the individual strategy are the key success factors to strong investment performance over the long-term. For most AUIM fundamental fixed income strategies, the investment process combines top-down macroeconomic outlooks with bottom-up credit research in a procedure overlaid with risk monitoring and risk management. This process emphasizes consistent research and analysis of fundamentals, sentiment and positioning, technical and valuation at multiple stages: top-down analysis; and sector and security-level idea generation. The firm's investment process seeks to balance top-down macroeconomic analysis with proprietary bottom-up research as appropriate for the individual strategy.