BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, has launched an emerging market debt fund range, which is focussed on sustainable investing.
The fund group is set to launch an ESG Emerging Markets Bond Fund, an ESG Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond Fund, an ESG Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund and an ESG Emerging Markets Blended Bond Fund. The launch was first reported by Citywire.
The funds will be sold through an open-ended fund structure and the performance measured against a set of ESG benchmarks which JP Morgan and BlackRock developed together in April this year.
In a media statement, BlackRock’s head of Sustainable Investing, said the company is building tools that allow its portfolio managers to analyse relevant sustainability information alongside the traditional financial metrics to inform active investment decisions.
Giulia Pellegrini, head of EMD Sustainable Investing added: “The gap between ESG leaders and laggards is large in the EM world, and a strong ESG data can provide forward-looking information that captures the underlying deterioration of an issuer’s creditworthiness, sometimes well before standard macro credit metrics.
“These funds harness our proprietary ESG scoring and other analytic tools to help build ESG-focused investment themes that take advantage of additional alpha-generating opportunities in the EMD space.”
As at the end of June 2018, the fund firm’s Emerging Markets Debt team oversaw more than $27 billion in assets globally.
