BNY Mellon IM launches EM debt total return fund

BNY Mellon Investment Management (IM) has launched an emerging market debt total return fund in response to the “demand for a long-only EM debt strategy”.

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The fund will be run by BNY Mellon subsidiary Insight Investment and managed by Colm McDonagh, head of emerging market fixed income at Insight, with support from the firm’s EM specialists. The Irish-domiciled Ucits umbrella fund will available to investors in the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific.

McDonagh (pictured) said: “EM debt has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two decades and today accounts for approximately 25% of global fixed income with opportunities in more than 70 countries.

“Investors are increasingly moving away from constrained single-sector EM debt to strategies where the investment manager has the freedom to allocate across all opportunities at their own discretion.”

The firm said that it sees the fund’s unconstrained approach as an evolution in the way investors will allocate to EM debt.

Fergus McCarthy, head of UK and Ireland intermediary distribution at BNY Mellon IM, commented: “Insight’s EM debt team has extensive experience managing benchmark unconstrained strategies across sovereign, local currency and corporate debt markets.

“It also has first-hand experience of seismic events across market cycles including the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 Russian debt default and the 2008 global financial crisis.

“We believe that this pedigree provides a significant advantage in managing the fund’s unconstrained portfolio.”

In November last year, BNY Mellon launched a Ucits version of its existing US equity fund.