RankiaPro Funds Meeting in Geneva: Insights from Fund Managers
16 APR, 2025
The latest edition of the RankiaPro Funds Meetings took place on Wednesday, April 9th, 2025, at the prestigious Hôtel Beau-Rivage in Geneva. This exclusive event brought together top investment professionals to explore market trends, innovative fixed income strategies, and credit opportunities across global markets.
Attendees had the opportunity to engage with distinguished speakers from leading asset management firms, including:
- Ralph Gasser, Head of Fixed Income Investment Specialists at GAM Investments.
- Fabrizio Biondo, Head of Innovative and Liquid Alternative Investments at Lemanik Invest SA.
- Guillaume Fradin, Portfolio Manager at LBP AM / La Financière de l'Échiquier (LFDE).
- Agnese Melbarde, Portfolio Manager, Emerging Market Debt at IVO Capital Partners.
The morning began with a networking breakfast, providing a valuable opportunity for fund selectors and institutional investors to share insights and perspectives on the current financial landscape. Each speaker then presented their firm's investment philosophy, strategic positioning, and views on macro and credit market dynamics.
RankiaPro remains committed to connecting investment professionals across Europe through high-level events that promote knowledge-sharing and meaningful dialogue.
Ralph Gasser, Head Fixed Income Investment Specialists from GAM Investments
GAM Star Credit Opportunities, managed by Atlanticomnium since 1985, aims to deliver consistent income by investing in subordinated debt of high-quality issuers, primarily in the financial sector. The strategy follows a proven buy-and-hold approach, focusing on strong credit metrics, diversification, and low duration risk.
GAM Star MBS Total Return, with a 20-year track record, targets absolute returns through U.S. mortgage-backed securities. It emphasizes non-agency RMBS and applies a macro-driven approach designed for resilience, low volatility, and minimal correlation to traditional markets.
GAM is also a pioneer in catastrophe bonds, offering access to a diversifying asset class that transfers insurance risk – such as natural disasters – from insurers to capital markets. These instruments provide very attractive yields largely uncorrelated with broader fixed income sectors.
With over 35 years of experience, Ralph Gasser brings deep expertise to GAM’s fixed income platform, spanning traditional, structured, and alternative debt across global markets.
Agnese Melbarde, Portfolio Manager, Emerging Market Debt from IVO Capital Partners
The IVO Emerging Markets Corporate Debt fund invests primarily in emerging market corporate bonds denominated in hard currencies (EUR or USD) and hedged against currency risk, offering good valuation and carry potential. Its objective is to take advantage of structural inefficiencies in emerging markets by remaining selective on credit risk and cautious on interest rate risk. With a track record of 10 years and 880M€ assets under management, this fund will invest in companies of good intrinsic quality but whose rating has been affected by their country of origin - this is the sovereign ceiling principle. The fund is non-benchmarked and has a contrarian approach to its sector and geographic allocations (currently underweight China for example and overweight Latin America) where Corporates provide a yield premium due to external reasons different from the quality of the issuer credit metrics. Beyond its conviction and non-benchmarked management, the fund also has an active management of its duration. In terms of performance, the fund is one of the Top performers in its Morningstar category over 1 year, 3 years and 5 years (Emerging Markets Private Bonds EUR Dominant).
Guillaume Fradin, Gérant-analyste Absolute Return from LBP AM / La Financière de l'Échiquier LFDE
Le fonds LBPAM ISR Absolute Return Crédit a un profil flexible et défensif ciblant les marchés de crédit européen. Lancé en 2018, son objectif de performance est ESTR + 250 bps, avec une VAR maitrisée de ±3%. Il repose sur huit moteurs de performance diversifiés, tels que le portage, l’arbitrage de taux et les situations spéciales, pour s’adapter aux conditions de marché. Grâce à ses plus de 150 positions et une gestion active, le fonds limite les risques idiosyncratiques tout en exploitant des opportunités variées notamment dans les crédits de qualité et à haut rendement, la dette financière et les taux. Son approche "all-weather" et ses solides performances historiques (+23% sur 5 ans, part I à fin mars 25) le rendent attractif pour réduire la volatilité d’un portefeuille diversifié. Avec une notation Morningstar 5 étoiles et son approche ISR, il allie performance et impact durable.
Fabrizio Biondo, Head of Innovative and Liquid Alternative Investments from Lemanik Invest SA
There are two standard and opposite approaches within High Yield markets, and both are faulty in the long run:
- To maintain market-neutral or above-market duration (counting on a supposed higher return potential of long-dated securities and “high-conviction” ideas to generate value), trying to “timely” reduce duration when clouds appear on the horizon;
- To structurally target short duration, whilst High Yield securities under normal conditions are priced to the first call, leading to material underestimation of mark to market risks; this second approach has become very popular in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. While the first approach fails on marketing timing and execution risks, the second one is systematically jeopardized by negative convexity issues.
Developed and managed by Fabrizio Biondo, our two flagship funds Lemanik Active Short-Term Credit (760 EUR/mln) and Lemanik Spring (300 mln/EUR) have successfully challenged the conventional wisdom in High Yield for almost two decades. Dynamic granularity, high portfolio diversification and 100% FX-Hedged multi-currency approach are a must for these Global HY solutions, where a strong presence of Regional HY (e.g. Nordic HY) is a further distinguishing feature.
When it comes to duration? We primarily focus on actual bond maturities, not on the optical escamotage of duration. Market analysis over the last 30 years proves that historical nominal returns, and excess returns, of short-dated HY (1–3 years) materially out-performed the market and its long bucket, combining unexpectedly higher credit spreads, lower volatility, and more benign default losses, while ultra-short-dated HY (0–1 years) captured 98% of the market return delivering fantastic risk-adjusted returns due to markedly lower volatility and default losses, and preserving the capital at all times.
Duration does not seem to be structurally beneficial to returns. While Active Short Term Credit focuses on the 0–1y bucket, Spring combines a Short-term global HY portfolio and a state-of-the-art credit derivative overlay, whose main goal is to fine-tune the spread duration at fund level according to a Dynamic Duration Model developed by Biondo.
