Aberdeen's Kaloo and Diment take charge of two Credit Suisse funds

Aberdeen Asset Management is to take charge of two Credit Suisse Brazil funds.

The vehicles, the US$94 million Credit Suisse Equity Brazil fund and the US$153 million Credit Suisse Bond Brazil- will be merged into Aberdeen's Luxembourg-Domiciled Aberdeen Global Sicav range in June.  The funds will become known as the Aberdeen Global - Brazil Equity fund and the Aberdeen Global - Brazil Bond fund.

The Brazil equity strategy will be managed Aberdeen's global emerging market team, which is led byDevan Kaloo, the asset manager's head of global emerging markets.  Brett Diment's emerging market debt team will manage the Brazil bond fund.

With Brazil being the worst performing market of 2011, there has been a lot of talk about whether the party is over for the country once regarded as Latin America's investment hotspot.

But Kaloo believes there are still plenty of opportunities to capitalise on in Brazil, namely  domestic consumption as Brazilians' prosperity grows.

Kaloo (pictured) explained: 'While Brazil has certainly blossomed due to being the world’s leading supplier of commodities, it would be wrong to view the region purely as a play on the world’s thirst for raw materials. Of more interest to Aberdeen is the rise of domestic consumption. Growing, youthful populations with burgeoning workforces are enhancing earning and spending power in the country, and this in turn is driving domestic growth.'

Diment said that from a fixed income perspective, yields in Latin America remain attractive.

'From a fixed income perspective, Latin American economies and in particular Brazil have weathered the global financial crisis well and are not burdened by the huge debt levels and imbalances of their so-called developed world peers. Yet the yields available in the fixed income market remain at a premium to those offered by fundamentally weaker G-7 nation bonds,' Diment, head of Aberdeen's emerging market bond team, sid.