mallowstreet Live Debate: Opportunities in Credit

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Legal & General Investment Management

AXA Investment Managers Ltd.

AXA Investment Managers is one of the world’s leading asset managers, backed by the strength of a well resourced and stable parent company, the AXA Group. We are a multi-expert asset manager, offering clients investment expertise across a broad range of asset classes. As a result we can deliver relevant, resilient and customised investment solutions. AXA IM oversees £475bn of assets under management and employs more than 2,449 people around the world, with a presence in 22 countries (as at 31/3/2013). We have a clear understanding of the specific issues facing private and public sector pension schemes and have experience of building bespoke investment solutions to meet their evolving needs. From inflation hedging strategies to global equity solutions and income generating products, our multi-expert investment model combines the flexibility of specialist teams with the strength and scalability of global shared resources. SmartBeta™, a smart solution to harvesting beta from fixed income and equity markets An issue passive investors have faced for many years is how best to harvest the beta available from financial markets, at a low cost. The most common approach thus far has been to simply track the relevant market capitalisation-weighted index, despite a number of well-documented shortcomings associated with this approach. For Corporate Bonds, diversifying using market capitalisation weightings seems a strange way to minimise credit risk, given that it dictates a greater investment in the most indebted companies – ultimately, not the best reward for investors. For Equities, passively invested market cap weighted strategies fail equity investors by clinging to past winners, assuming that the price of a stock is always a fair reflection of its true value and not offering real diversification across names, sizes and sectors. With these shortcomings in mind, AXA IM has developed its SmartBeta solution, a long-term investment strategy that aims to capture market beta more efficiently, at a low cost. Find out more about both our SmartBeta Credit and Equity strategies here. Liability Driven Investment (LDI) Working in partnership with you to reduce risk and to achieve more stable funding levels At AXA Investment Managers, we help our clients navigate turbulent environments by working in close partnership to design and implement LDI solutions to meet their own specific objectives and liabilities. We also believe all of our clients should be able to manage their interest rate and inflation risk in a cost effective way regardless of their size and governance budget. AXA IM has been using derivatives for investment and risk management purposes since 1997 and implemented our first LDI mandate using derivatives for an external client in 2002. We offer the full range of services for our UK LDI clients with an approach focussed on controlling risk and optimising returns: - Solution design and implementation: providing investment expertise across a broad range of assets and instruments in order to manage and mitigate our client's specific asset and liability risks. - ‘Smart' Implementation: dynamically managing exposures to ensure that they remain adapted to your needs based on current market conditions and/or any changes to the context of your investments. - Continuous monitoring and governance of your fund: On-going management aimed at maximising return and minimising cost and risk using the most efficient hedging instruments and managing.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management

mallowstreet Live Debate: Opportunities in Credit

With diverging Central Bank Monetary Policies, Credit continues to be at the top of the agenda for many pension funds. As government bond yields begin to fluctuate across the curve, mallowstreet has gathered together a group of fixed income specialists to review some of the recent developments in both the credit and debt markets and explore their key features.

Some of the questions that our panel will be answering inlcude:

Given current yields, where is there value in credit, which sectors / areas show the greatest opportunites
Is credit is a matching or growth asset? Or is it something in-between?
How can trustees be assured that a single manager has the correct skills and expertise for managing their money across all these strategies?

Our panellists include:

Ian Hutchinson, Investment Grade Portfolio Manager | L&G Investment Management
Jeremy Cave, Portfolio Manager | Goldman Sachs Asset Management
Nick Hayes, Head of Active Fixed Income UK | AXA Investment Managers

Do you have a question for our panel?

Ask a question to post your questions - we will endeavour to answer as many as we can on the day.

Speakers

Jeremy Cave
Jeremy is a portfolio manager within the Global Fixed Income Team in Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Prior to joining the firm, Jeremy worked at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, where he was a managing director and head of Client Portfolio Management for EMEA. Previously, he was chief investment officer for Flagstone Re and spent six years at Schroders Investment Management. Before that, Jeremy was head of Global Fixed Income for Citigroup Asset Management. Jeremy earned a BSc from the University of Edinburgh in 1982.
Nick Hayes
Head of Active UK Fixed Income & Flexible Global Strategies. Nick joined AXA IM in 2010 and leads the Active Fixed Income business in the UK, as well as Flexible Global strategies globally. Initially joining as a Senior Portfolio Manager, he was appointed to his current role in June 2014. He manages both Global and Sterling portfolios, with a particular emphasis on ‘Strategic’ funds which dynami-cally allocate across the full Fixed Income risk spectrum. He is the lead portfolio manager for several of AXA IM’s flag-ship mutual funds, including AXA WF Global Strategic Bonds, the AXA Sterling Strategic Bond Fund and the AXA Sterling Corporate Bond Fund. In addition to his portfolio management responsibilities, Nick is a regional leader with-in the global Credit Strategy Group, and is also responsible for providing relative value coverage of the Basic Industry and Capital Goods sectors. Prior to joining AXA IM, he spent seven years at New Star / Henderson New Star where he was a Senior Portfolio Manager in the New Star Fixed Interest team. Prior to join-ing New Star in May 2002, Nick worked at WPP Group. Nick holds a BA Honours degree in French and Spanish from Trinity College, Dublin.
Ian Hutchinson
Investment Grade Portfolio Manager, L&G Investment Management.

Ian is a portfolio manager working within our Pan-European Credit team. Along with the other fixed income managers he is responsible for setting and implementing strategy across our portfolios. He joined LGIM in 2004 as a product specialist on the fixed income desk, and in 2006 became a trainee fund manager role working on UK investment grade credit portfolios. He started his career in 1998 at Standard & Poor's MMS as a Eurobond analyst. Ian is IMC qualified and a CFA charterholder. He holds a degree in international relations from the University of Sussex.