The fund, domiciled in Luxembourg and Ucits compliant, is co-managed by Andres Sanchez Balcazar, the firm’s head of global bonds, as well as senior investment managers Sarah Hargreaves, David Bopp, and Thomas Hansen.
The portfolio invests in fixed income with an unconstrained approach, targeting an annual return of 6-8% above cash, gross of fees. The universe is all sectors in both developed and emerging markets.
“We take an approach to bond investing that is not tied to a fixed income benchmark. This way, we can look for attractive investment opportunities across the whole fixed income market to benefit from market volatility and relative value trades,” said Balcazar in a statement.
Earlier this month, Schroders also launched a global income fund in Hong Kong. Its London-based co-manager Michael Scott told FSA in an earlier interview that sterling-denominated bonds are trading at a discount, given the critical concern over the UK’s departure from the European Union. He believes UK bonds look attractive from a risk-return perspective, despite a subdued economic growth in the country.
The Schroders fund is also unconstrained by an index, which allows the manager to choose freely among sub-asset classes and use derivatives, convertible bonds and asset-backed securities.
In 2017, global bond funds available for sale in Hong Kong and Singapore returned 6.19% on average, compared to 1.48% over the past three years. The best performer was Capital Group Global High Income Opportunities Fund, which invests 29.7% of assets in local currency government bonds, according to FE.
Best performers in global bond sector in 2017
|
Capital Group Global High Income Opportunities (LUX) |
9.71 |
| Fidelity Global Income |
9.01 |
|
Fidelity Global Investment Global Bond* |
8.96 |
| Allianz Global Credit |
8.93 |
|
Morgan Stanley Global Bond |
8.41 |
| Category average |
6.19 |
Data: FE. In US dollar. * indicates the fund available for Hong Kong investors only
