Pictet-Asian Local Ccy Debt R EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|20/07/2023

by Arvind Subramanian
Pictet has announced that head of emerging-markets fixed income Mary-Therese Barton will move to a new role as Pictet’s fixed income CIO as of 1 Oct 2023. She will replace current fixed-income CIO Raymond Sagayam, who will join Pictet’s board of partners.

Alper Gocer, who currently leads the emerging-markets sovereign debt team and is the lead manager on its local-currency emerging-markets debt portfolios, will replace Barton as the leader of the broader emerging-markets debt platform in October, overseeing both the sovereign and corporate emerging-markets debt teams. He will continue to lead the sovereign debt specialists and will remain lead portfolio manager for Pictet-Emerging Local Currency Debt.

Gocer is not a primary day-to-day manager on the Pictet-Asian Local Currency Debt strategy, but he is a key contributor to the portfolio, both in his role as the group’s asset-class lead for local-currency debt and as chair of the investment meetings where the group formulates its macro views.

While these changes mean an increase in Gocer’s workload, they do not have a material impact on our view of Pictet-Asian Local Currency Debt. The strategy’s lead day-to-day managers, Carrie Liaw and Ali Bora Yigitbasioglu, remain in place. Furthermore, Gocer’s increased administrative workload will be mitigated by hard-currency specialist Rob Simpson’s move to a new position overseeing the group’s portfolio analysts, strategists and client portfolio managers. (Simpson will remain a member of the emerging-markets sovereign debt investment team focusing on blended strategies, and the group also plans to hire an additional hard-currency specialist in the coming months.)

Pictet-Asian Local Currency Debt retains its People and Process ratings of Average and Morningstar Medalist Ratings ranging from Neutral to Negative.

 
Pictet Asian Local Currency Debt benefits from deep market expertise and a collaborative investment process, and upcoming changes to the team structure do not present a disruption to the current process. Still, it is not clear that their success in managing global portfolios can be carried over to the Asian bond space.

The strategy is led by day-to-day managers Carrie Liaw and Ali Bora Yigitbasioglu, who joined in May 2018 and July 2020, respectively. The duo averages two decades of investment experience and brings complementary skills, with Liaw specializing in rates while Yigitabsioglu specializes in foreign exchange and derivatives. The pair are part of an eight-member emerging-markets sovereign team, notable for its rich experience and relative stability and headed by industry veteran Alper Gocer. Gocer leads the group’s daily discussions, in which the team members formulate their market views, evaluate trade ideas, and monitor overall portfolio positioning.

Starting in October 2023, Gocer will replace outgoing head of emerging-markets fixed-income Mary-Therese Barton, who will assume the role of fixed-income CIO at the firm. Gocer’s new position will involve leading the emerging-markets corporate and greater China bond teams in addition to this group. While he will continue to lead this team’s daily investment meetings and oversee this portfolio’s positioning, he will be less involved on a day-to-day basis. However, given the group’s highly collaborative investment style and Gocer’s continued presence, we do not expect these changes to constitute a major disruption to the investment process here.

This strategy aims to outperform its JPM Asia Broad Diversified Index benchmark by 1 to 3 percentage points annually and has the flexibility to invest up to 30% of the portfolio in off-benchmark fare, mainly developed-market debt and currencies. The investment process blends the team’s top-down macro-outlook with bottom-up views on individual sovereign issuers, in a collaborative approach involving the entire emerging-markets sovereign debt team. The team’s macro analysis is a strength and the solid alpha generation from the portfolio’s off-benchmark bets is testament to their expertise. Nevertheless, the strategy’s relatively narrow Asia investment universe constrains the investment process, and the team has not yet been able to replicate the consistent success it experienced in its global emerging-markets bond strategies.

Since Liaw became a comanager here in May 2018 through June 2023, the fund’s clean I USD share class returned 1.4% annualized and lagged its Markit iBoxx ALBI Morningstar Category benchmark by 32 basis points, though it beat 79% of its category peers. The fund’s off-benchmark short U.S. rates position and tactical local currency bets helped deliver a stellar performance in 2022. However, performance in the current year through June 2023 has suffered, primarily due to the portfolio’s underweight in China rates and the overweight position in Japanese yen.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Investment process continuity remains despite upcoming team changes.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAverage
ParentAbove Average
ProcessAverage
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
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