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Four money managers examine portfolio management strategies in the latest issue of The Wall Street Transcript, available at (212/952-7433) or http://www.twst.com/info/info556.htm

TWST: What are the portfolios that you have? What is the investment philosophy?

Mr. Thayer: Like so many investment shops, we don’t manage money with a single style. We tend, like most fiduciary asset managers, to focus on large cap stocks and have outside advisers to help us with foreign equities and small cap stocks. We have Templeton as a subadvisor for our foreign equity fund and Wasatch as a subadvisor for our emerging growth fund or small cap growth fund. We have 21 portfolio managers located in five different offices throughout our organization, and their primary focus is on large cap growth and large cap value. The sample portfolio I sent you is our Associated Core Equity Portfolio, which is what we consider to be our large cap growth portfolio. We do not have a family of proprietary funds. We traditionally have managed common and collective funds, as many trust organizations have done. We entertained the idea of mutualizing those common and collective funds, but looking at the direction of the investment management business, rather than mutualizing the common and collective funds, we decided to focus instead on separately managed portfolios. The Associated Core Equity Portfolio, for all intents and purposes, is a clone of our Common Stock Fund, which has been around since the mid-1960s. And our Managed Value Portfolio is a clone of our Equity Income Fund, which has been around since the mid-1960s.

TWST: If we focus on your Core Equity portfolio, what is the investment decision-making process?

Mr. Thayer: Our objective with this portfolio is to have diversification across the 10 major industry groups of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Normally, we would neutrally weight each one of those industry sectors. However, given the weakness in the telecom sector, we have less than a market weight in telecommunications at this point in time. But our focus is really to try to identify the companies that we feel are best positioned in each one of these industry groups and to buy and hold those names for a long period of time to create tax efficiencies for our investors. The primary metric that we look at in selecting companies for this portfolio, besides their relative attractiveness in terms of size and position in their industry, is earnings growth. What we want to be able to demonstrate to our clients who are invested in this portfolio is that the earnings growth of the companies that we hold is greater than the Standard & Poor’s 500. We believe that over a long period of time, stock prices follow earnings. And by focusing on earnings growth we believe that that will lead to superior investment results.

TWST: Do you have any other foreign securities in the Fund?

Mr. Thayer: Nokia (NYSE:NOK) is the only other ADR that we own.

TWST: That’s started to slip recently. What is the outlook for Nokia?

Mr. Thayer: We continue to like Nokia on a longer-term basis. Their most recent quarterly results met analysts’ expectations. However, their caution on the outlook for handset sales for the remainder of the year has caused the shares to sell off here shortly after the earnings announcement. It’s actually firmed up at this point. We feel compelled to own a wireless handset company because we believe that, with the buildout of the wireless infrastructure, there is another leg of growth to come in wireless with 3G. And we think that with Nokia gaining market share in the handset business, it’s the best company to own in that area.

This special Investing Strategies Report includes:

1) James C. Hansberger, Managing Director at Hansberger Group at Salomon Smith Barney, examines portfolio management strategies in this timely and deeply informative 5,400-word interview from The Wall Street Transcript.

2) Outlook for International Investing - Neil Murdoch, Executive Vice President at AIC Limited, examines portfolio management strategies in this timely and deeply informative 6,400-word interview from The Wall Street Transcript.

3)John P. Thayer, Chief Investment Officer for Associated Trust Co., examines portfolio management strategies in this timely and deeply informative 3,600-word interview from The Wall Street Transcript.

4) Laurence E. Ach, Chief Investment Officer at Trainer Wortha, examines portfolio management strategies in this timely and deeply informative 3,700-word interview from The Wall Street Transcript.