Launch of Natixis Short Term Global High Income Fund to take advantage of the attractive yield offered by short-term High Yield bonds

Sub-fund of the UCITS under Luxembourg law, Natixis International Funds (Lux) I³, Natixis Short Term Global High Income Fund is aimed at all investors, both professional and non-professional.

Short Term High Yield bonds: an attractive asset class

Short term High Yield bonds are particularly attractive in the current environment:

• Historically they have proven less sensitive to interest rate rises and will be less volatile than the credit market as a whole⁴;
• They respond to the demand from clients subject to Solvency II, notably insurance companies, who are seeking investments with a limited cost of capital;
• Over the long term, they offer lower volatility than High Yield across all maturities.

An innovative active management strategy focused on bond selection

Natixis Short Term Global High Income Fund benefits from a non-benchmarked active management strategy without sector allocation combined with a 100% bottom up⁵ approach. To deploy this strategy, the fund managers are supported by the expertise of the Natixis Asset Management credit research team comprising 17 analysts based in Paris, London and Des Moines (USA), headed by Sanda Molotcov, CFA. The research team focuses on identifying the issuers with the most robust fundamentals and offering the most compelling risk-reward. They pay particular attention to liquidity, solvency and the structure of the debt, together with the business models of the issuers.  This bond selection process is thus at the heart of the fund’s alpha generation. 

Optimum level of portfolio diversification

In addition to this bottom up⁵ selection process, the co-fund managers Nolwenn Le Roux, CFA, and Vincent Marioni, SFAF, have established internal guidelines on the maximum number of holdings by sector and by issuer to ensure an optimum level of portfolio diversification. The portfolio of Natixis Short Term Global High Income Fund thus holds 90 international issues as of April 16, 2014. 

• [1] High Yield – Rating below BBB- (Standard & Poor's Ratings Services), Baa3 (Moody's Investors Service, Inc.) or equivalent for Fitch ratings.
• 2 Bonds are also a form of debt.
• 3 Set up in 2013.
• 4 The figures mentioned are from previous years. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
• 5 An investment process in which the micro aspects are generally more important than the macro factors ("top down"), i.e. in which each investment is made based on the intrinsic qualities of a particular issuer.