Aberdeen give Diment lead role in fixed income restructure

Aberdeen Asset Management has realigned its global fixed income investment range and team.

The Global Macro product and research will be overseen by Brett Diment (pictured), who under the change becomes head of emerging market and sovereign debt.

József Szabó, head of global macro, is to relocate to London from Budapest to manage non-credit global bond mandates. He joined Aberdeen in 2011 from the central bank of Hungary, where in the last six years Szabó was managing fixed income portfolios as part of the official forex reserves management operations.

The reshuffle also sees Viktor Szabó, a senior emerging market debt portfolio manager based in London, start to coordinate Aberdeen's global sovereign research platform, while Oliver Boulind, a senior portfolio manager in the US, has been appointed head of global credit.

Boulind will be based in London and hold responsibility for all global credit portfolios, again with a mandate to capture opportunities from all markets worldwide.

Paul Griffiths, global head of fixed income, likened the changes to those made by Aberdeen some 10 years ago when it rolled out the investment process applied on its Asia Pacific equity funds across all of its equity portfolios worldwide.

Griffiths explained: 'This new structure is underpinned by the enhancement of the common investment process for the business worldwide. This process integrates all of the group’s fixed income investing regions and recognises best practice from the group’s most successful teams.

'The detailed sovereign analysis employed by our emerging markets debt team will now be used when researching all government bonds.

This reflects an increasing recognition that the analysis of developed market investments must be aligned with that of emerging markets as the line between these groups becomes further blurred. József and Viktor will take the lead on this overseen by Brett.'

As a result of these changes Kieron Nutbrown, head of global macro, Richard Dryer, head of global credit and Jon Cunliffe, head of global macro strategy have left Aberdeen.