Stone Harbor Investment Partners, an institutional fixed income investment manager with expertise in emerging markets debt and global credit strategies, has launched a new UCITS fund, Stone Harbor ESG Emerging Markets Debt Blend Fund, domiciled in Ireland.
The fund invests across hard currency and local currency sovereign and corporate debt across the universe of Emerging Markets, measuring performance versus JP Morgan’s suite of ESG emerging debt indices. The fund is launched with just over EUR40 million in assets invested from a European pension fund.
“We believe investors are increasingly aware of the positive impact their investment can have in emerging markets,” says Peter Wilby, managing partner and co-CIO. “Investment can be channelled to support economic development, raise living standards, and create incentives for countries to continue to improve their ESG performance.”
Stone Harbor’s traditional emerging markets debt strategies integrate ESG factors and issuer engagement in their investment process. The dedicated ESG strategy enhances this by adding negative screening of countries and corporates, utilising ESG indices, and typically seeking a larger weight for Green Bonds in the portfolio.
“We have striven through our history to be at the forefront of ESG risk assessment. We believe emerging market debt offers investors very attractive potential returns which can be gathered while investing in a socially responsible way via our strategy,” says Jim Craige, co-CIO and head of Stone Harbor’s Emerging Markets Team.
