JP Morgan Asset Management has hired three senior portfolio managers from Fortis Investments in a move to expand its emerging market debt team.

Michal Wozniak, Didier Lambert and Alain Defise join the firm as senior portfolio managers located in London, reporting to Bob Michele, the firm’s global chief investment officer for fixed income.

In his new role Mr Wozniak focuses on identifying Central and East European investment opportunities, implementing trade ideas and managing portfolio exposures.

Before joining JP Morgan, he was senior fund manager at Fortis Investments, where he managed regional funds invested in Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey) and co-managed global emerging markets debt funds.

Mr Lambert is responsible for identifying, implementing and managing local market investments across client portfolios. He also joins from Fortis Investments, where he served as a fixed income analyst and later as a senior portfolio manager and deputy chief investment officer within emerging markets fixed income.

During his 10 years at Fortis he specialised in local market investments, overseeing portfolio exposures and monitoring risk across the funds.

Mr Defise assumes responsibility for identifying credit opportunities and managing corporate exposures in emerging market portfolios. He, too, joined from Fortis Investments, where he held various corporate credit roles and most recently served as a senior portfolio manager within emerging markets fixed income, managing corporate allocations across a range of emerging market bond funds.  

“These new hires continue to demonstrate our commitment to developing a leading global fixed income offering. We believe emerging market debt holds tremendous opportunity for global fixed income clients and have modified the structure of the team and centralised the global coordination of our effort in London to capitalise upon this,” said Mr Michele.