Lazard Asset Management is launching a new emerging markets quantitative fund which will trade a diversified, low volatility strategy with an ESG focus placed at the forefront of its stock-picking process.
Lazard Asset Management is launching a new emerging markets quantitative fund which will trade a diversified, low volatility strategy with an ESG focus placed at the forefront of its stock-picking process.
The UCITS-compliant Lazard Emerging Markets Managed Volatility Fund, co-managed by Susanne Willumsen, Paul Moghtader and their team, aims to produce a stable equity performance above market-cap returns annually over a market cycle, with 20-30 per cent lower risk.
The investment portfolio is built around a proprietary, quantitatively-based, multi-factor investment process which targets companies with desirable fundamentals, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations, and below-average risk characteristics.
“We incorporate bottom-up ESG and financial analysis from Lazard’s global team of fundamental analysts into the investment process for the Lazard Emerging Markets Managed Volatility Fund,” Paul Moghtader, managing director, portfolio manager/analyst at Lazard Asset Management, said in a statement. “While the same is true across all of our portfolios, ESG factors are perhaps even more important when investing in the emerging markets.”
“Low volatility and emerging market equities are words that are rarely grouped in the same sentence,” said Susanne Willumsen, managing director, portfolio manager/analyst at Lazard Asset Management.
“The terms, however, are not mutually exclusive. We believe investors stand to benefit from a low-volatility allocation in emerging markets as it can result in more diversified economic exposures, the avoidance of market concentration risk and the diversification of holdings from a market cap-weighted benchmark.”
The new fund is managed by the 10-strong team of portfolio managers that runs Lazard’s USD16 billion quantitative equity platform.
Lazard Asset Management manages a range of equity, fixed income, and alternative investment products globally, including developed and emerging markets strategies, and event-driven, special situations and convertible arbitrage hedge funds. Lazard manages some USD243.6 billion in total assets globally.
