GMO, a global investment manager known for its long-term, valuation-oriented strategies, today announced that the GMO Emerging Country Debt Fund received a 2026 LSEG Lipper Fund Award in the Emerging Markets Hard Currency Debt category. The award recognizes the fund’s three-year performance, which reflects the team’s history of delivering top-decile peer performance going back to the fund’s 1994 inception.

“We are grateful for this recognition of our deeply experienced team, as well as our genuinely differentiated approach to the asset class, which remains as relevant today as when it was founded over 30 years ago,” said Tina Vandersteel, lead portfolio manager for GMO’s emerging debt strategies. “This award is a reflection of our constant effort to turn out singles and doubles through arbitrage-focused security selection while keeping an eye out for triples and home runs that can come around sovereign distress and work out.”

The GMO Emerging Country Debt Fund seeks to add value primarily through security selection within a country’s sovereign, quasi sovereign corporate, and occasional opportunistic local debt markets exposures, and secondarily through active country positioning. The fund is benchmarked to the J.P. Morgan EMBI Global Diversified Index. Over its history, the strategy has generated attractive long-term excess returns versus the benchmark while offering diversification benefits within multi-asset portfolios.

GMO has recently expanded access to its Emerging Country Debt capabilities with the launch of the GMO Emerging Country Debt Shares Fund (GMAJX), which is designed specifically for U.S. intermediary and wealth platforms and provides streamlined operational access to the underlying Emerging Country Debt Fund. The new vehicle allows wealth platforms to offer GMO’s ECD strategy to their advisor and RIA clients.

“The combination of compelling long-term beta, strong alpha potential, and diversification benefits makes emerging market debt a powerful complement to traditional fixed income allocations. We believe many investors can benefit from a dedicated, actively managed allocation to this asset class, and we are pleased that a wider range of advisors and their clients can now access this approach through our new U.S. vehicle,” said Alex Bark, Head of Global Client Relations at GMO.

For more information about GMO’s Emerging Country Debt strategy, please contact your GMO relationship manager or advisors@gmo.com.

About GMO

Global investment manager GMO, established in 1977, brings together focused expertise within its investment teams, industry-leading research, and client solutions and service to advance clients' goals. Privately owned and renowned for conviction in a valuation-based, long-term investment philosophy, GMO serves sophisticated institutions, financial intermediaries, and families, and managed $78.2 billion as of December 31, 2025. The firm is headquartered in Boston, with offices in London, Sydney, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Tokyo (representative office).

About the LSEG Lipper Fund Awards

The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards, granted annually, highlight funds and fund companies that have excelled in delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance relative to their peers. The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards are based on the Lipper Leader for Consistent Return rating, which is a risk-adjusted performance measure calculated over 36, 60 and 120 months. The fund with the highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return (Effective Return) value in each eligible classification wins the LSEG Lipper Fund Award. For more information, see lipperfundawards.com. Although LSEG makes reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data contained herein, the accuracy is not guaranteed by LSEG Lipper.

Risks associated with investing in the Fund may include: (1) Credit Risk: the risk that the issuer or guarantor of a fixed income investment or the obligor of an obligation underlying an asset-backed security will be unable or unwilling to satisfy its obligation to pay principal and interest or otherwise to honor its obligations in a timely manner; (2) Market Risk - Fixed Income Investments: the market price of a fixed income investment can decline due to a number of market-related factors, including rising interest rates and widening credit spreads or decreased liquidity stemming from the market's uncertainty about the value of a fixed income investment (or class of fixed income investments); and (3) Illiquidity Risk: Low trading volume, lack of a market maker, large position size, or legal restrictions may limit or prevent the Fund from selling particular securities or closing derivative positions at desirable prices. For a more complete discussion of these and other risks, please consult the Fund's Prospectus.

An investor should carefully consider the fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses before investing. This and other important information can be found in the fund’s prospectus. To obtain a prospectus please visit www.gmo.com. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.

The J.P. Morgan EMBI (Emerging Markets Bond) Index Global Diversified is an independently maintained and widely published, uniquely weighted, U.S. dollar-denominated emerging markets sovereign index comprised of Brady bonds, Eurobonds, traded loans, and market debt instruments issued by sovereign and quasi-sovereign entities.

Alpha is a measure of risk-adjusted return. Beta is a measure of a portfolio's sensitivity to the market.

The GMO Trust funds are distributed in the United States by Funds Distributor LLC. GMO and Funds Distributor LLC are not affiliated.

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