Phoenix Investment Adviser, a private investment firm that specialises in high-yield corporate debt, has increased its assets under management by almost 40 per cent year-over-year, managing over USD530m as of 1 December.

This robust growth, coupled with ongoing interest from a global range of institutional allocators, has prompted the firm to continue expanding its investment team.

Alex Duncan, the most recent of several senior hires, has been appointed as a senior research analyst. He will be covering the healthcare, chemicals, power, and shipping sectors. Duncan will report to Phoenix's founder and chief investment officer Jeffrey Peskind (pictured).

"We've grown significantly in assets over the past year as investors have become more comfortable with our ability to generate alpha in some inefficient areas of the US credit markets. It's an exciting time to be a value-based credit picker in the US corporate high-yield market," says Peskind. "Today we are aggressively capitalising on investment opportunities across all sectors, and talented professionals like Alex will continue to strengthen our team."

In addition to ongoing inflows into the firm's flagship JLP Credit Opportunity Fund, this past summer the firm's newer fund, the JLP Institutional Credit Fund, received a USD40m seed investment from a large European financial institution. The fund, designed to limit downside and volatility while generating high-yield corporate credit returns, currently has approximately USD65m in assets.

Prior to joining Phoenix, Duncan was a managing director at Par-Four Investment Management, where he focused on long and short principal investments across the high yield, leveraged loan and distressed markets. His responsibilities included representation on bankruptcy court creditor committees and the negotiation of workouts and restructurings. He previously served as a research analyst at Citigroup Alternative Investments.