Specialist fixed income manager, BlueBay Asset Management (BlueBay), has appointed Polina Kurdyavko as head of its emerging market debt team.
Previously co-head, Polina (pictured), will become sole head of the BlueBay emerging market debt desk following David Dowsett’s move to become a strategic adviser on emerging markets for the firm. Both Kurdyavko and Dowsett will continue to report into Raphael Robelin, Chief Investment Officer.
As a leading investor in emerging markets Kurdyavko has made her mark over the years as a pioneer in this space, ushering the development of new asset classes within the emerging market universe and advocating the merits of including emerging market debt in global portfolios. Polina has led her team to help develop the first benchmarks for a series of dedicated emerging market debt strategies, including emerging market hard currency corporate bonds in 2008 and emerging market local currency corporate bonds in 2014. Kurdyavko is widely recognised as a leading female investment professional, who manages a large and successful investment team and continues to champion diversity and innovation in asset management.
Dowsett’s’s move away from day to day risk taking and into a broader strategic role represents an additional avenue for BlueBay to provide thought leadership in emerging markets. As a prominent industry veteran, Dowsett’s has been a key architect in the development of the BlueBay’s emerging markets business and, with Kurdyavko, has built a strong and highly experienced emerging market debt team. Applying his investment discipline to evaluating structural trends provides a new perspective for exploring commercial and market opportunities in emerging markets and creates potential for a more complete value added service to clients.
Commenting on their new roles, Robelin says: “David and Polina’s new respective roles highlight BlueBay’s determination to continually deepen the level of expertise we offer our clients in an evolving asset class. David’s focus on longer term structural trends in the market, coupled with Polina’s continued leadership of the emerging markets investment team underscores our commitment to being at the forefront of investing for clients.”
