Neuberger Berman has broadened its fixed income UCITS offering with the launch of the Neuberger Berman Global Opportunistic Bond Fund.
The new, flexible, UCITS fund seeks attractive risk-adjusted returns by opportunistically investing in a diversified mix of fixed rate and floating rate debt securities across sectors, under varying market environments.
The management team shifts allocations in response to changing market conditions – with no persistent biases or tilts. This enables the fund to exploit market mispricing across a broad global opportunity set.
This is a strategy that Neuberger Berman’s fixed income team has been running in segregated accounts since 1 October 2012 and has delivered an annualised 4.6 per cent return to 31 December 2016.
The new fund will be co-managed by Andrew Johnson, head of global investment grade fixed income, Jon Jonsson, senior portfolio manager global fixed income, Ugo Lancioni, head of currency management, and Thanos Bardas, head of rates, who have an average 22 years of industry experience and will be supported by Neuberger Berman’s 129-strong global fixed income team.
Jonsson says: “We anticipate periods of heightened volatility for world bond markets throughout 2017 so believe it will be a year where it will be necessary to alter strategy several times on changing policy and economic signals. US treasury yields have already risen steeply on heightened inflation fears and may have further to go as President-elect Donald Trump’s policies become reality. In the US, our portfolio seeks a diversified spread exposure, with an emphasis on the US consumer through non-agency RMBS, reflecting comfort with the underlying fundamentals, and also a mix of high yield and bank loans on solid US growth, stronger corporate profits, and the likely pro-growth policy.
“In Europe, there are growing political concerns surrounding the forthcoming elections, while there are question marks over the durability of the ECB’s bond-buying programme. We expect to have a short exposure to German sovereign yields as the long end of the yield curve could begin to look vulnerable as we see higher yields and a steeper curve in the Euro area against a backdrop of a gradually improving economic outlook.”
Dik van Lomwel (pictured), head of EMEA and Latin America, adds: “Neuberger Berman has built up a diversified fixed income franchise over many years and the launch of the Global Opportunistic Bond Fund is a natural extension of our capabilities in the UCITS range. It joins our other global fixed income offerings: the US Strategic Income, Global Bond Absolute Return and Global Bond Funds.
“Flexible fixed income offerings with the ability to invest in a wide-range of assets have increased in importance in recent years, as investors continue to face an uncertain and fast-moving economic environment with many traditional fixed-income assets offering low to zero yields.”
The Neuberger Berman Global Opportunistic Bond Fund will be a sub-fund of the Irish-domiciled UCITS fund umbrella, Neuberger Berman Investment Funds plc. It launched on 20 December 2016 with assets under management of approximately USD10 million. It is registered for sale in the UK and is in the process of being registered across Europe and Asia.
