BlueBay expands ESG fixed income offering into Luxembourg product
BlueBay Asset Management is expanding its environmental, social and governance (ESG) fixed income offering.
The global fixed income manager, said that it was responding to client demand for greater incorporation of ESG into fixed income investment strategies. As a result BlueBay has added a more dedicated ESG strategy in its Luxemburg UCITs structure, called the BlueBay Global High Yield ESG Bond fund, a sister fund to the existing BlueBay Global High Yield Bond fund.
BlueBay said in a statement announcing the move that it has been working with global investment consultants Mercer and PKH, a leading Nordic pension fund, to establish an investment strategy focused on investment returns in the high yield asset class whilst including ESG analysis, to add to its existing approach of ESG investment risk management, which it applies across all managed assets.
Raphael Robelin, chief investment officer at BlueBay, said, “BlueBay was founded in 2001 in response to new opportunities in the debt market. Our strength is in our pro-activeness in anticipating the needs of our clients and market trends. Fifteen years on, we believe we are facing the start of another important market development – the application of ESG investment strategies to the debt asset class.”
Global
BlueBay is a global specialist fixed income manager. Headquartered in London with a strong European presence, it invests over US$50bn (as at 31 December 2016) for institutional investors, wealth managers and financial institutions across the fixed income investment spectrum on a global scale.
BlueBay has offices in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Stamford (US) and Japan and is wholly-owned by Royal Bank of Canada and part of RBC Global Asset Management.
BlueBay is a signatory of the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). A recent assessment by them [August 2016] of BlueBay’s internal ESG investment efforts concluded the approach as “progressive” in comparison to the median of its peer group.
