Matthews Asia has launched the Credit Opportunities Fund, the newest fund to its offshore line-up, which invests in all countries and markets in Asia, including developed, emerging, and frontier countries and markets in the Asian region.
The Matthews Asia Credit Opportunities Fund intends to distribute its dividends quarterly for the Distribution share classes. Teresa Kong, portfolio manager at Matthews Asia leads the team with Satya Patel. Most bonds in the portfolio will be sub-investment grade, or so-called ‘high yield’ bonds.
The aim of the Matthews Asia Credit Opportunities Fund is to provide investors with a compelling fixed income investment solution that offers yield enhancement and diversification. Asia high yield credit has historically generated attractive returns compared to assets of similar risk: about 10% annualized returns with 10% annualized volatility. By identifying compelling opportunities in the growing Asia credit universe, the asset manager hopes to generate an attractive risk-adjusted return profile over the long run.
The firm points out that Asia has a large and liquid corporate bond market and, as a relatively under-researched asset class, it provides opportunities to potentially benefit not only from attractive levels of yield, but also capital appreciation. The fund intends to leverage Matthews Asia’s 24 years of experience in Asia equity and fixed income security selection to effectively manage this strategy.
Asia’s contribution to global growth continues to grow and the region generally has high levels of foreign currency reserves, high personal savings rates, and low levels of inflation, particularly when compared to Latin America, Russia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Currency regimes across the region have become more flexible over the past 15 years, which generally facilitates more flexible monetary policy by countries in the region. Currencies in the region can be volatile, which is one reason why the Matthews Asia Credit Opportunities Fund focuses primarily on U.S. dollar-denominated investments.