Niels Faassen: Today we announce the winner of the Morningstar European Fund Manager of the Year Fixed-Income award. But first we’ll have a look at our nominees. Our first nominee is Jim Leaviss for his work on the Silver Rated M&G Macro Bond fund.
Our second nominees are Bart van der Made, Rob Drijkoningen and Gorky Urquieta managing the Silver rated Neuberger Berman Emerging Market Debt Hard Currency Fund.
And our third and final nominees are Sander Bus and Roeland Moraal who manage Robeco High Yield Bond which is also Silver rated.
And the winners of the Morningstar European Fund Manager of the Year Fixed-Income are Sander Bus and Roeland Moraal for Robeco High Yield Bonds.
Sander Bus and Roeland Moraal are very experienced high-yield managers held in high regard by Morningstar. Bus has been involved with the Robeco High Yield Bonds fund since its launch in 1998, initially as co-manager and since 2001 as lead manager, while Moraal joined as a co-manager shortly after, in 2003. Both have personal investments in the fund which we believe helps align their interests with those of their investors.
Bus and Moraal apply a solid and proven investment process driven by in-depth bottom-up research combined with a good sense of risk awareness, and have demonstrated their ability to add value through superior credit selection and favourable credit beta management.
Under Bus as lead manager, since 2001, the fund has outperformed the Morningstar category by wide margins and also outperformed its own benchmark over a ten-year period, which is a high hurdle to overcome in high-yield bonds. Risk-adjusted returns are also impressive landing in and around the top decile.
We congratulate Robeco’s Sander Bus and Roeland Moraal on winning the award for Morningstar European Fund Manager of the year for Fixed income, well done.
