Under normal market conditions, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets in debt securities of “emerging market countries.” “Emerging market countries” include those countries considered to be developing or emerging by the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations; countries included as developing or emerging markets by S&P Dow Jones, Morgan Stanley Capital International or Russell index providers; countries in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Bond Index - Global (EMBIG) or JPMorgan Government Bond Index - Emerging Markets Broad (GBI-EM Broad) fixed income indexes. These countries typically are located in the Asia-Pacific region, Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and Africa. In addition, countries that have restructured their external or local debt during the past 10 years or currently have restructured external or local debt outstanding may also be considered to be emerging market countries.

The Fund invests mainly in debt securities issued by sovereign and subsovereign government entities, including securities issued by political subdivisions, local authorities, government agencies, government owned, controlled, sponsored or guaranteed corporations and supranationals located in emerging market countries. Although the investment manager tends to focus on these types of securities, securities issued by corporate entities that are controlled (i.e., more than 50% owned) by a sovereign entity, and corporate emerging markets debt, are also considered suitable investments. The Fund may also invest in loan participation notes (LPNs) that are secured by collateral of any of these entities.

The Fund may invest up to 100% of its assets in debt securities that are rated below investment grade (also known as “junk bonds”). These securities are either rated below investment grade by independent rating agencies such as S&P® Global

Ratings (S&P®) or Moody’s Investors Service (Moody’s) or unrated securities the investment manager determines are of comparable quality. The Fund also may invest in investment grade debt securities or unrated securities the investment manager determines are of comparable quality when those securities appear more advantageous relative to high yield securities. Securities rated in one of the top four rating categories of the independent rating agencies are considered to be investment grade. The Fund may also invest up to 15% of its net assets in defaulted debt securities.

For purposes of pursuing its investment goals, the Fund may enter into various currency related transactions involving derivative instruments, including currency and cross currency forwards. The use of these derivative transactions may allow the Fund to obtain net long or net negative (short) exposure to selected currencies.

The portfolio construction process can be summarized in three integral steps—country allocation, currency allocation and issue selection. The first stage of the emerging market debt investment process is identifying the countries for which management has a favorable outlook, which is managed with a bottom-up, research-driven perspective. Since the portfolio is constructed through bottom-up fundamental research and not relative to a benchmark index, there is no requirement to hold securities from any one country. The next decision is whether to take exposure in the form of “hard currency” or local currency instruments. Hard currencies are currencies in which investors have confidence and are typically currencies of economically and politically stable industrialized nations. The last decision concerns security selection. This depends on a number of factors, including the type of the security’s coupon (fixed or floating).