The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Lombard Odier Investment Managers
Lombard Odier Investment Managers has launched its Liquid Global High Yield Strategy, a strategy which uses high-quality liquid cash bonds and credit derivatives to provide exposure to high yield markets. The exposure aims to deliver long-term outperformance over traditional high yield indices.

The strategy is managed by Anando Maitra who is also a co-manager on fixed income funds.  The management team also includes Jamie Salt, portfolio manager, Sandro Croce, fixed income CIO, and Jérôme Collet, head of systematic portfolio management. Constructed with a combination of treasury bonds and credit-default swap indices, the strategy aims to solve the liquidity and cost issues affecting high yield fixed income investors by minimising transaction costs and ensuring a high capacity for quick investment and liquidation.

“Investors seeking to benefit from these long-term returns have often had to contend with a lack of liquidity in shocks, high costs, drawdowns and relative underperformance. The Liquid Global High Yield Strategy allows investors to access those upsides while removing the pain of implementation, ultimately providing a more efficient way to gain high yield exposure,” Maitra said.

Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management
Paris-based Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management has launched the EdR SICAV Global Resilience fund, designed to capitalise on the changing geopolitical environment, and seize growth opportunities.

To achieve this, EdR SICAV Global Resilience targets companies that meet the needs of society. The companies selected are able to absorb shocks, protect their value chains and remain indispensable, regardless of turbulence, the firm said in a statement.

The fund is marketed in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Cyprus, Greece, Germany, Spain, France, the UK, Italy, Luxembourg. It is managed by Edmond de Rothschild AM equity managers Aymeric Gastaldi and Christophe Foliot, and built around four pillars. These include cybersecurity and defence, as well as the modernisation of infrastructure necessary to meet changing demands in respect of vital needs for populations and supply chain relocation. The investment universe will include companies developing critical infrastructure providing secure access to basic needs.

There is also growing demand for personal protection systems and preventive healthcare. The third pillar focuses on companies that develop safety devices for personal protection, as well as those that innovate in medical care, such as preventive medicine and healthcare equipment to deal with health crises. Finally, the fund supports innovations in energy efficiency and technological advances, particularly in agriculture.

“This new strategy completes our range of thematic equity funds, the first of which was launched 40 years ago. Since then we have contributed to meeting the challenges facing our society, and supporting the major trends shaping the economy. With Global Resilience, we offer a solution aligned with these objectives and which seeks to make society more resilient,” Jacques-Aurélien Marcireau, co-head of equities at Edmond de Rothschild AM, said.

Invesco
Invesco has expanded its range of active exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with the launch of the Invesco Global Enhanced Equity UCITS ETF. The fund will use a strategy with a long-term track record from a team with more than 40 years’ experience in factor-based investing, the firm said in a statement.

The fund aims to deliver a benchmark-like experience but with outperformance over the long term compared with the average return from global equity markets. The MSCI World Index will be referenced for performance measurement purposes only. 

The sub-investment manager, Invesco Quantitative Strategies, which is part of the Invesco Solutions' team, aims to achieve the fund’s investment objective by applying an optimisation process based on value, quality and momentum factors. The IQS proprietary model will assess the attractiveness of equities in a broad universe of liquid large- and mid-capitalisation developed market securities.

“We’ve been managing this Global Enhanced strategy since 2005. For this ETF, just as with the other client accounts using this strategy, we are targeting outperformance of 1 per cent per year compared to the MSCI World Index and a tracking error of 1 to 1.5 per cent. We are also setting maximum active positions for individual stocks, industries, sectors and countries, which is intended to deliver an ‘index-like experience’ for investors,” Erhard Radatz, global head of portfolio management at Invesco Solutions, said.

“We believe this ETF will be attractive for many investors looking for core global equity exposure. With the expansion of our ETF range, investors have the choice between ETFs that are designed to track the performance of an index, whether that’s a standard market-cap weighted or a smart beta benchmark, and funds that seek to deliver enhanced investment outcomes,” Craig Cheesman, head of EMEA ETF product development at Invesco, added.

Franklin Templeton has also been expanding its ETF range in Europe, most recently with two new indexed exchange-traded funds, classified as Article 8 under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR): the Franklin S&P 500 Screened UCITS ETF and the Franklin S&P World Screened UCITS ETF.

M&G Investments
M&G Investments has launched the M&G European ex-UK Fund to provide access to Europe's diverse equity markets. The launch comes at a pivotal moment in allocation cycles as global investors reassess biases towards the US and seek to diversify investment strategies.  

The fund will be managed by Richard Halle, an experienced investor in disciplined value strategies, whose team manages more than £5.5 billion in European equities. He will be supported by deputy fund managers, Daniel White and Shane Kelly alongside M&G’s wider global equity team. 

The fund is an actively managed value strategy that invests in inexpensive, out-of-favour European companies with share prices that don’t reflect their true value. Stocks are selected on the basis of their individual merits, through a combination of value-focused screening and qualitative assessment to concentrate on value without sacrificing the strength of the companies in the portfolio. 

"European equities are currently trading at a significant discount to their US counterparts in almost every sector, which is very encouraging for investors,” Richard Halle, manager of the M&G European ex-UK Fund, said. “In a global market dominated by expensive US growth stocks, we are actively identifying compelling opportunities in underappreciated European businesses with good potential. As investor interest refocuses on fundamentals and structural reforms creating a more supportive environment for value investing, now is a very exciting time for investing in Europe.”