Pictet-Global Emerging Debt HJ EUR

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|03/05/2024

by Arvind Subramanian
Pictet has announced that Mary-Therese Barton, head of Emerging Markets Debt at the firm, will be promoted to the role of head of Emerging Markets Fixed Income as of Aug. 1, 2022. Barton currently leads the 17-member team of portfolio managers and analysts responsible for the firm’s global and regional emerging-markets sovereign debt strategies. She now steps into a newly created role that adds an additional layer of oversight between the Emerging Markets Debt team leaders and Fixed Income CIO Raymond Sagayam. Previously, the heads of the Emerging Market Sovereign Debt, Emerging Market Corporate Debt, and greater China bond teams reported directly to the CIO; now they will report to Barton, who reports to Sagayam.

Portfolio manager Alper Gocer, who has served as the Emerging Market Sovereign team’s asset-class leader for local-currency emerging-markets debt since 2018, will take over from Barton as head of that team as of Aug. 1, 2022.

These changes are relevant to three strategies currently rated by Morningstar:

Pictet-Emerging Local Currency Debt, which is managed day to day by Gocer. This strategy has People and Process Pillar Ratings of Above Average, and Morningstar Analyst Ratings of Neutral for all share classes.

Pictet-Global Emerging Debt, which is managed day to day by Guido Chamorro and Robert Simpson. This strategy has a People Pillar rating of Above Average, a Process Pillar rating of Average, and Morningstar Analyst Ratings ranging from Bronze to Neutral.

Pictet-Asian Local Currency Debt, which is managed day to day by Carrie Liaw and Ali Bora Yigitbasioglu. The strategy and has People and Process Pillar Ratings of Average and its Morningstar Analyst Ratings range from Neutral to Negative.

The announced changes do not affect our fundamental view of these strategies’ capabilities and processes. All three strategies are managed within Pictet’s tight-knit Emerging Market Sovereign team, whose eight portfolio managers work collaboratively to implement investment ideas across their several portfolios and who are well-equipped to weather the reshuffle. Although Gocer’s workload has increased with his new administrative responsibilities, he is well supported by the rest of the team in managing the Emerging Local Currency Debt strategy and can be expected to effectively balance his new duties with running that portfolio. At all three strategies, Barton is expected to continue to contribute her macro views and to oversee the investment process alongside her new duties. We therefore maintain our conviction in the strategies’ current ratings.
 
Thanks to a deeply collaborative process, changes within Pictet Global Emerging Debt’s investment team should not make waves.

Guido Chamorro, a veteran at Pictet who joined the firm in 2005 and assumed the role as the strategy’s co-lead manager in 2018, guides this offering. He is supported by Robert Simpson, who joined this strategy in 2020, having earlier managed similar strategies at Insight Asset Management for over a decade. In October 2023, Simpson expanded his responsibilities within the team to focus on the firm’s blended and bespoke emerging-markets debt mandates, though he remains actively involved in the strategy’s investment decisions here.

The team underwent some restructuring in October 2023, coinciding with the elevation of Alper Gocer to the position of head of emerging-markets fixed income, succeeding Mary-Therese Barton, who assumed the position of fixed-income CIO within the firm. With this change, Gocer now oversees the emerging-markets corporate and greater China bond teams, while continuing to lead the emerging-markets sovereign debt team. Gocer was also formally added to this strategy as a comanager, replacing Barton. In March 2024, Christopher Preece, who has contributed to this strategy since 2015, initially as a portfolio analyst and later as a macro strategist, was added to the portfolio manager lineup. However, considering the team’s extensive experience and Gocer’s continued involvement, the recent team restructuring should not prove disruptive.

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. While the strategy’s bottom-up picks among hard-currency sovereign issues do not stand out from the crowd, the managers have built an excellent record by adeptly managing macro risks and utilizing off-benchmark currency and rates plays. Despite recent stumbles in 2023, the fund's I USD share class posted an annualized gain of 1.2% from May 2018 through February 2024, outperforming its JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified Index benchmark by approximately 100 basis points.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™An appealing emerging-markets debt offering.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAbove Average
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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