Andy Sowerby

Legg Mason, one of world’s largest funds management groups, has announced that Legg Mason Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond Fund has been added to one of Australia’s leading superannuation and investment platforms, Netwealth, following a strong demand for this strategy from financial advisers and their clients.

In 2012, Western Asset, a leading fixed income affiliate of Legg Mason, set out to develop an aggressive, unconstrained fixed-income strategy—Macro Opportunities (MO)—to offer investors the opportunity to generate returns in a slow-growth, low-rate environment. It needed to be both opportunistic and defensive, yet offer a compelling risk/reward profile.

Now, over five years later, MO has been successfully tested in challenging markets—both up and down.

Andy Sowerby, country head Legg Mason Australia and New Zealand said: “With these objectives in mind, the Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond strategy was designed to provide concentrated and opportunistic exposure to Western’s key themes, with an emphasis on active management of macro risk factors.

“In Australia, responding to high investor demand for such strategies, Legg Mason launched the local unit trust version of this market-leading liquid alternatives strategy, the Legg Mason Western Asset Macro Opportunities Fund in late 2016.

“ Since its inception this strategy has proven that its approach can generate attractive and consistent returns even in a lower return world.

“We are delighted that growing client interest has led to the Legg Mason Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond Fund now being added to the Netwealth superannuation and investment platform. This is the fastest growing strategy in the Legg Mason fixed income suite of products globally, with total assets recently surpassing A$13bn.

Sowerby further added: “The Legg Mason Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond Fund is a true diversifier in client portfolios, and exhibits the ideal correlation traits that you could expect from an effective alternatives strategy.”

“The Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond strategy has performed well on an absolute and risk-adjusted basis in the 62 months since its incep­tion. The strategy has an average annualized return, gross of fees, of 10.9% with an ex-post volatility of 6.1%,” noted Joseph A. Filicetti, Product Specialist at Western Asset in a recent client update.

“This strategy has been severely tested over the last few years, and has proven to be remarkably resilient. We believe the intercon­nectedness of global markets and the increased importance of central bank policy will continue to fuel dislocations that create opportunities for Macro Opportunities inves­tors—regardless of the direction of rates,” said Filicetti.

The Legg Mason Western Asset Macro Opportunities Bond Fund has a ‘recommended’ rating from Zenith Partners, a leading independent research firm.

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