8 March 2010
Specialist fixed income manager Omega Global Investors today announced the launch of two new fixed interest funds, the Omega Global Government Bond Fund and the Omega Global Corporate Bond Fund.

According to Omega’s Managing Director, George Vassos, the funds meet investors’ growing need to disaggregate their fixed interest allocations, and improve both risk management and return through a more liquid and transparent allocation of their fixed interest dollars.

“In the recent past there have been too many fixed interest managers out there that failed to offer investors risk control over their fund allocations,” he said. “This has largely been a function of the aggregation of major fixed interest benchmarks, which we believe are inefficiently constructed and give a higher weight to companies and governments that issue more debt – which are not always those more likely to deliver the best risk and return outcomes.

“Our approach is quite different, recognising the asymmetrical return profile of fixed interest by being focused first and foremost on risk control, enabling us to focus on more important elements such as, for example, a country’s or corporation’s ability to pay the debt back – and hence deliver better return outcomes for investors.”

Mr Vassos went on to say that Omega’s style of investment focuses on a back-to-basics approach that restores fixed interest to its rightful position as a defensive part of the portfolio, and that the two new funds have been structured to deliver this.

“In the same way that equity investors a decade ago moved to control risk and generate better return outcomes for investors by choosing small, large, growth, value or emerging market managers according to their risk appetite, so are fixed interest investors now wanting to differentiate more clearly between sectors and characteristics among fixed income managers. These two new funds deliver them that: a specialised core allocation in Global Government Bonds and Global Corporate Bonds respectively.

“In each fund we are looking at investment grade fixed interest securities with strong diversification across the portfolios, with between 100 and 200 investments in each. Rather than ‘come one, come all’ market capitalisation benchmarks which are constructed based on the needs of issuers, each of Omega’s new funds is designed to provide a core allocation to sovereign bonds and corporate bonds which meet the needs of investors in terms of risk control and better sources of market return.”

“We’ve already had significant interest in these new funds, which reflect a return to the fundamentals that, among some managers, were rather spectacularly missing in action during the GFC. We believe what Omega is doing in fixed interest is the way of the future and we look forward to restoring investor confidence in this asset class that has been too much misunderstood and misused in the recent past.”

ENDS

About Omega Global Investors
Omega Global Investors is a specialist fixed interest manager based in Melbourne, Australia. Omega is led by a highly experienced management team and is a majority employee-owned boutique , along with Macquarie Global Investments holding a 19.9% equity stake in the business.

Omega believes that while benchmarks are useful tools for comparing investment returns, they are not the best way to select securities as they give a higher weight to companies that issue more debt. Omega has developed an integrated quantitative approach to select organisations and governments that have a higher probability of servicing their debt and therefore providing returns to investors.

Omega’s name derives from Omega - the final letter of the Greek alphabet - and reflects our credo: to begin with the end in mind.