Man Emerging Markets Debt Strategy

The Man Emerging Markets Debt strategies provide access to the complex universe of Emerging Markets debt through three distinct investment opportunities, all of which are managed by a seasoned investment team:
 

Investment Opportunities:

  1. Emerging Markets Local Currency Rates
  2. Emerging Markets Hard Currency Debt
  3. Emerging Markets Debt Total Return
 

The team believes in three fundamental tenets:

  • Emerging Markets debt and currency markets are inefficient
  • Inefficiencies are a result of the incorrect understanding and pricing of risk
  • An approach to investing that adds value by combining deep fundamental research with top down and quantitative screening

Approach

In summary, the team's key differentiators are:

  • Guillermo Ossés, Head of Emerging Markets Debt Strategies, has broad experience across all aspects of emerging markets debt investing including credit analysis, currency and rates trading
  • Portfolio managers who are specialists in their own areas, which creates diversification and fosters responsiveness 
  • The application of a strong valuation discipline to asses fundamental views and express them efficiently 
  • Strong risk management discipline helps to maximise information ratio and optimise model portfolio

Fundamental analysis and relative valuation are at the core of the investment process which is further enhanced by top-down views.

The investment process consists of four broad stages:

  • Bottom-up analysis - Based on proprietary models that aim to construct rankings of country credits, currencies and rates based on relative attractiveness and perform valuation analysis to determine if asset prices reflect the team's views on relative attractiveness. Much of the security selection for each country will be focused on identifying the richest / cheapest instruments across the curve.
  • Top down analysis and consideration of positioning - Any fundamental views are reconciled with top down views prior to implementation. In addition to macro themes and global scenarios, the team consider the degree to which there is crowding in the investment identified via bottom up analysis.
  • Model portfolio construction - Construction of the model portfolio is built around targets and available securities. The team uses the same process for all the portfolios with certain tweaks for each strategy and in particular the Total Return as there is more shorting involved.
  • Stress testing - Testing is conducted to ensure that the portfolios meet the tracking error, volatility and drawdown targets applicable. The sensitivity of each portfolio to different risk factors is assessed for consistency with the general macro view that the team has developed as part of the top down process.
Approach Long
Asset Class Fixed Income
Geographic Focus Emerging Markets
Benchmark
EM Local Currency Rates JPM GBI-EM Global Diversified
EM Hard Currency Debt JPM EMBI Global
EM Debt Total Return NA

The indices listed are appropriate benchmarks for the Strategies.