When we find an investment that we like and a business that we want to support, we’ll tend to invest a lot of our fund’s capital in those individual investments. That means we build concentrated portfolios of the best opportunities that are available in a sub-investment grade market. Whether that’d be high yield bonds or loans, and whether that’d be to the top or the bottom end of the risk spectrum within our investment universe.
So for us, capital preservation is absolutely key. We firmly believe that if we focus our analysis and diligence on preserving our investors’ capital that should ensure excess returns through the course of the cycle.
The overriding investment philosophy within the leveraged finance team is capital preservation and we seek to do that through our propriety research process. Ultimately, if you can minimize your downside risk, and therefore defaults, that leads ultimately to better risk adjusted returns.
The companies that we invest in don’t know boundaries or regions in the same way that you or I might do. And therefore, we have to assess them on a global basis. Many sectors are very global in the way that they operate. Having a team based in Connecticut, based in the U.S., led by Tom, gives us the ability to engage with companies directly in their home region, where they’re based, but to understand the dynamics in different industries on a global basis. We believe that by assessing the best opportunities in what is a very global market, we can bring the best investments into the portfolios that we have for the investors that we have.
I think that what makes BlueBay unique is that we operate very concentrated portfolios. It’s extremely rare, as a result of our diligence and our rigorous investment and analysis process. We actually find investments are a credit that we want to invest in. When we do find something, we tend to invest in that with conviction and with confidence. So what that tends to result in is a fairly concentrated portfolio of high conviction ideas in investments.