Green Ash Partners, part of the Woodman Group, has launched its inaugural sustainable short duration credit fund.
The Green Ash Sustainable Short Duration Credit fund was successfully launched last month with USD20 million AuM, and is an open-end fund incorporated in Luxembourg.
The Sustainable Short Duration Credit fund leverages off the existing management and analyst team, aiming to generate stable risk-adjusted positive returns whilst minimising drawdowns in a low yielding environment. The firm’s ESG integration policy allows the management team to combine both negative and positive screening, focusing on lending to companies that are taking positive steps to meet ESG and sustainability goals. The firm’s ESG investment methodology excludes sectors and companies that score poorly in terms of ESG criteria, including those operating in the tobacco, weaponry and coal sectors. The firm believes that companies committed to ever improving ESG standards will ultimately deliver superior investment returns as they benefit from a lower cost of capital.
The new fund is actively managed, with daily liquidity and benchmark free. Its objective is to invest in investment grade and high yield bonds that demonstrate ‘best in class’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria within their sectors. The portfolio has a maximum legal maturity limit of five years, and maximum modified duration limit of two and a half years, while maintaining an average minimum portfolio rating of BBB- at all times.
Founded in 2009 by Miles Cohen and Nick Freeman, Green Ash is an independent investment manager (regulated by the FCA) focused on providing both liquid credit and multi asset portfolio solutions to its institutional and professional client base. After the successful integration of Pentalpha Capital into Green Ash earlier this year, and with the support of its strategic partner, Woodman, the firm now manages around USD1 billion AuM across several UCITs funds and managed accounts.
Miles Cohen, CEO and co-founder of Green Ash, comments: “Green Ash are very excited to expand our product offering and launch our first sustainable investment strategy, which uniquely covers both global investment grade and high yield bonds in the short duration space. Developing an investment process that has ESG factors at its heart whilst covering the whole liquid credit spectrum from investment grade to high yield is particular challenging. The team has worked incredibly hard to deliver a strategy that has sustainability as a core pillar and meets the ever-increasing need for lower risk, higher yielding short duration credit product.”
