White Paper

To mark the fifth anniversary of his firm’s Strategic Income global bond strategy, TwentyFour Asset Management chief executive, Mark Holman, looks at how the COVID-19 crisis has transformed the bond markets in 2020, and where he believes investors should be looking for value heading into 2021.

Having fallen behind other markets in the post-COVID rally due to a lack of direct central bank support, we believe European ABS is set to outperform other parts of fixed income in the coming months as supply wanes and investors look to pick up on what we think could be a compelling relative value opportunity.

Five years ago we launched a simple strategy with a complicated name. The goal sounded simple: to return 2.5% more than cash, after fees, from a long-only, unlevered credit fund. And to do that with as little volatility as possible (but never being allowed to have more than 3% volatility).

Since their inception in 2013, Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds have developed into a $200bn plus multi-currency asset class that, with a high level of due diligence, can offer an attractive opportunity for fixed income investors facing another decade of ultra-low yields.

As with many things ESG related, interest in, and issuance of, green bonds is growing rapidly.

Chris Bowie outlines the highlights and lowlights for the fund, the successes and challenges, the triumphs and the odd sleepless night.

At TwentyFour Asset Management we believe Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors can have an influence on the value of our investments.

At TwentyFour Asset Management we believe Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors can have an influence on the value of our investments, and we have recently formalised our approach to these risks by integrating an ESG framework throughout the firm’s investment process, across all strategies.

This paper addresses how we think about ESG factors in relation to ABS investments at TwentyFour in more detail, given the unique nature of the asset class, but within the established framework that is in place across all the investment teams.

European collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) have been a favoured asset class for certain TwentyFour Asset Management strategies over the last several years, and more recently clients have quite rightly been asking why we prefer them to US CLOs.

As one of Europe’s leading asset-backed securities (ABS) investors, we are often asked why we haven’t yet sought approval to expand the remit of our strategies to US securitisations. Here are five reasons we think a focus on Europe remains the best-rewarded strategy when it comes to the global ABS market today.

The current US economic expansion is now the longest in modern history, and investors globally will be seriously contemplating the end of the credit cycle. This late-cycle period could prove particularly challenging. Mark Holman, chief executive of TwentyFour Asset Management presents five tactics for fixed income investing late in the credit cycle.