HEAD-TO-HEAD: Bluebay vs Robeco

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The Bluebay fund has been managed since its inception in 2010 by Mark Dowding, co-head of investment grade debt and senior portfolio manager, Mark Bathgate, portfolio manager and Russel Matthews, portfolio manager. The larger investment grade debt team includes 13 portfolio managers, five assistant PMs, six credit analysts and four execution traders.

Dowding has 24 years of investment experience. He joined Bluebay in 2010, having worked previously at Deutsche AM, Invesco and Morgan Grenfell AM. Matthews has 18 years of investment experience. He joined Bluebay in 2010 from Invesco AM. Bathgate joined Bluebay in 2016, after co-founding a macro hedge fund, and earlier PM experience at Morgan Grenfell. He has 21 years of investment management experience.

BlueBay is one of Europe’s largest specialist managers of fixed income credit, sovereigns and alternative strategies, Dhoosche noted. It was acquired by Royal Bank of Canada in 2010.

Dhoosche said he liked the Bluebay team’s tactical approach. “If a trade goes against them they will try to find offsets if they still believe in the theme or the catalyst for the investment thesis,” he said. “They will try to look at hedges either on the currency side or the derivatives side. They are big players in derivatives. It’s a very interesting way to make money,” he added.

The Robeco fund has been managed by Olaf Penninga, lead portfolio manager, since 2010. He has 19 years of investment experience, most of it with Robeco, in part as quantitative researcher. He also manages two quantitative duration funds.

The broader global fixed income macro investment team, headed by Kommer van Trigt, consists of nine portfolio managers with an average industry experience of 16 years.

Robeco was founded in 1929 in the Netherlands. In 2013 it was acquired by Orix Corporation, a financial services group based in Japan.

Robeco manages €161bn ($191bn) in assets, while Bluebay’s AUM is €50bn.

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