MFS Meridian Emerging Mkts Dbt A1 EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|08/09/2023

by Giovanni Cafaro
On 9 Feb 2023, MFS announced that Matthew Ryan, lead portfolio manager of MFS Meridian Emerging Markets Debt, will step down as portfolio manager on 30 April 2024. He has been at the helm of the strategy since 1998.

The fund is currently comanaged by Ward Brown and Neeraj Arora, who will continue to be jointly responsible for the strategy going forward. Brown has held the role of comanager for almost 15 years, having joined MFS in 2005 as an emerging-markets sovereign research analyst. Arora was promoted to comanager in 2019, having contributed to the fund as a sovereign research analyst since 2011. Effective 31 March 2023, he will also be appointed as comanager of MFS Meridian Emerging Markets Debt Local Currency and MFS Meridian Global Opportunistic Bond. The manager duo is further supported by a stable and steadily growing team of dedicated portfolio managers and analysts.

The firm has provided plenty of notice for the intended plan, which we will discuss with the team as part of our next formal review.
 
MFS Meridian Emerging Markets Debt’s strengths are its experienced team and diligent investment process.

In February 2023, MFS announced that lead manager Matthew Ryan, who took over this strategy in 1998 after a decade working as an economist with the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund, will step down in April 2024. The fund is currently comanaged by Ward Brown and Neeraj Arora, who will continue to be responsible for the strategy going forward. Brown has held the role of comanager for 15 years, having joined MFS in 2005 as an emerging-markets sovereign research analyst. Arora was promoted to comanager in 2019, having contributed to the fund as a sovereign research analyst since 2011. The managers continue to be supported by a stable team of dedicated portfolio managers and analysts, which has grown through the years, coupled with a strong ability to retain talent. In the past, Ryan and Brown were entirely responsible for sovereign credit analysis, but over the past eight years they have gradually added seven dedicated emerging-markets sovereign analysts, four with 10-plus years’ experience. There are also seven emerging-markets credit analysts contributing to the process. Succession planning is handled sensibly, and its risk is mitigated by promoting Arora to co-portfolio manager in 2019. Overall, the team continues to stack up well compared with its Morningstar Category peers.

The managers follow a collaborative investment process. Ryan, Brown, Arora, and the sovereign analysts meet three times a week for a roundtable discussion, where trade ideas are discussed and decisions are usually taken as a group, though Ryan has the final say. The process combines top-down considerations with bottom-up analysis of country fundamentals, and the managers have quite a bit of leeway to venture from their benchmark, the JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified Index. Emerging-markets corporate bonds have made up as much as 30% of the portfolio at times, largely depending on their relative value compared with government bonds and providing further diversification benefits. The team also uses local-currency bonds and foreign-exchange forwards to build positions in emerging-markets currencies as well (historically around 3% of assets).

The strategy boasts an experienced and stable team, as well as a collaborative and consistently applied process that has resulted in a solid track record relative to peers. The flexible approach has also enabled the strategy to limit drawdowns during market downturns, such as 2020 and 2022, when the strategy was able to better weather downside risk, outperforming its benchmark by 2.3% and 2.4%, respectively.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Despite a veteran manager's planned departure, comanagers supported by a growing team provide continuity.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
ParentHigh
ProcessAbove Average
 
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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