More focused approach to Fixed Income at Gartmore

Last week, the merger of the Gartmore International Fixed Interest Fund into the Gartmore Corporate Bond Fund was successfully completed, bringing the Fund’s assets under management to £655 million.

Simon Surtees and Karl Bergqwist, co-Heads of Fixed Income at Gartmore and managers of the Gartmore Corporate Bond Fund commented, “We believe that the Corporate Bond Fund can deliver better risk-adjusted returns to investors and that it offers them the opportunity to participate in one of the most innovative funds in the market. The performance of this Fund has been enhanced by our ability to use Credit Default Swaps (CDS) to reduce the downside risk of investing in bonds. The success of this strategy can be seen in the Fund’s performance; it ranks in the top quartile of its peer group over one, two, three and five years.

“The merger of the two Funds is part of a process aimed at streamlining the range of fixed income products that we offer at Gartmore. It follows the merger of the Gartmore UK Fixed Interest Fund into the Corporate Bond Fund in November last year. This increasingly focused approach allows us to play to our strengths and capitalise more effectively on the team’s portfolio management skills and expertise in credit research. It allows us to concentrate more fully on our core areas of expertise, such as the use to CDS.

“In addition to these changes to our Fund range, we continue to develop our credit research capabilities and plan to further advance our use of CDS technology. To this end, we recently recruited Simon Cowie as a Senior Credit Research Analyst specialising in credit intensive non-financial sectors. He joins Gartmore from HSBC Investment Bank where he was a Director and proprietary bond trader.”