Boutique global credit investment manager Bentham Asset Management has announced the appointment of Linden Smith as senior analyst.
Mr Smith joins Bentham from AMP Capital Investors, where he was senior credit analyst in the Credit Research team for more than six years, covering Australian and global banks. During his time at AMP Capital, he was also primary analyst for public private partnership (PPP) assets for more than three
years.
Commenting on Mr Smith’s appointment, Bentham Asset Management’s managing director, Richard Quin, said the appointment maintains the Group’s commitment to providing investors with access to actively managed global credit.
“Linden is well regarded and brings with him extensive experience and industry insights, we look forward to him joining the team”.
Linden has joined as a Senior Analyst, focused primarily on bank capital securities. Separately, Bentham hired Alexander Lee in late 2016 in the role of dealer/quantitative analyst.
“Alex is a talented financial professional and his responsibilities include dealing and providing portfolio and trade analytics,” Mr Quin said.
He joined the Bentham investment team from UBS, where he was a trade support analyst within the Equity Derivatives Sales & Trading business.
The Bentham team actively manages credit, interest rate and FX risks in the portfolio across a range of institutional quality asset classes, including senior secured loans, asset backed securities, capital securities, convertible bonds and high yield bonds.
The announcement follows a positive year of performance for Bentham Asset Management’s suite of funds.
The Bentham Global Income Fund returned 11.7% (after fees) for the year to 31 January 2017. The Bentham Syndicated Loan Fund delivered a net return of 14.1% and its High Yield Fund returned 17.6% (after fees) over the 12-month period.
Fixed income markets continue to contend with historically low interest rates after a multi-decade bull market in bonds.
Mr Quin said, “Going forward, investors will need to re-consider their fixed income portfolios in super and what will best serve them over the next period of time – and my belief is that actively managed credit will have an important role to play.”
Bentham recently launched an asset-backed securities (ABS) fund focused on generating income with an emphasis on capital preservation by investing in highly rated global ABS’s.
Individual investments are actively across different global ABS sub sectors including Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (“RMBS”), Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLO’s”), Aircraft backed securitisations and other ABS securities. The Fund has a target average credit rating of single-A.
