Axa Investment Managers (Axa IM) has appointed Olga Fedotova and Sailesh Lad to its fixed income emerging markets team ahead of the departure of Damien Buchet, head of emerging markets fixed income.
The roles are newly created and occur as Axa IM merges its emerging markets debt team, based in London and Paris, with its Asian fixed income team, based in Hong Kong as part of a growth strategy.
Buchet is to pursue another opportunity, says Axa IM, but will work with Lad on the AWF Emerging Market Short Duration and AWF global Emerging Market Bonds funds until September, when Lad takes over to become senior portfolio manager within the global emerging markets fixed income team.
Lad joins from Ignis Asset Management where he had responsibility for local and external currency debt management.
From August, Fedotova will be head of emerging market credit and joins from UniCredit, where she managed a team of credit analysts covering emerging market corporate and financial issuers. Prior to this, she was head of emerging market corporate credit strategy and a senior analyst in fixed income research at HSBC.
Axa IM′s merged team will have six portfolio managers, two credit analysts and one research assistant. Two portfolio engineers will provide support, alongside four fixed income traders specialising in emerging market debt and two emerging market economists.
Jim Veneau, head of the Asian fixed income team, and Chris Iggo, chief investment officer of fixed income, will have joint responsibility for management until a successor for Buchet has been appointed.
John Porter, head of fixed income and structured finance at Axa IM, says: “The creation of a global emerging markets debt team combining our teams from Hong Kong, Paris and London recognises the increasing attractiveness of this asset class and our belief that investors will continue to increase their weightings towards emerging market debt.”
The firm also plans to add further resources on the credit research side and is developing an initiative in the renmimbi bond market.
©2015 funds europe
