The Dreyfus Corporation, a BNY Mellon company, announced this thursday that it has launched the Dreyfus Opportunistic Emerging Markets Debt Fund, an actively managed mutual fund. The fund’s objective is to seek to maximize total return by investing across emerging market debt asset classes including local and hard currency denominated debt issued from government, government-related and corporate issuers.
“We have seen a great deal of investor interest in finding ways to leverage the expanding opportunities and higher economic growth rates being experienced in many emerging economies,” said Dreyfus President Charles Cardona. “The difficulty arises in gaining access to these markets or possessing the necessary research capabilities to navigate these opportunities. Dreyfus Opportunistic Emerging Markets Debt Fund looks to address these issues by providing professional money management and institutional access to help investors benefit from the growth occurring within the capital markets of emerging economies.”
The fund, which is sub-advised by Standish Mellon Asset Management Company, is managed by Alexander Kozhemiakin, managing director of emerging market strategies and senior portfolio manager responsible for managing all emerging market debt portfolios at Standish and Javier Murcio, portfolio manager and senior sovereign analyst.
“The investable universe of debt issued in emerging market countries has grown substantially in size and breadth over the last 30 years,” Kozhemiakin said. “Emerging market debt, once predominately issued in U.S. dollars by government entities, has expanded to include hard and local currency denominations issued by sovereign, as well as corporation issuers. We employ an investment process that looks to take advantage of this expanded opportunity set by identifying shifts in country fundamentals and consider the risk-adjusted attractiveness of currency, issuer and duration returns for each emerging market country.“
“Using these inputs,” Kozhemiakin concluded, “We seek to identify the best opportunities on a risk-adjusted basis across emerging market debt instruments (including those issued by sovereign, quasi-sovereign and corporate issuers), currencies, and local interest rates.”