Among the key individuals hired are 22 investment professionals, 19 of those from ING.
The team will be led by Gorky Urquieta and Rob Drijkoningen, both former heads of emerging markets debt at ING.
“This has clearly been on the Neuberger Berman wish list for a couple of years… and we were fortunate to pick up Gorky and Rob and their colleagues to join us,” Paul O’Halloran, managing director of Neuberger Berman in Australia said.
Mr Urquieta was attracted to the position both because of the overall package and because Neuberger Berman was creating a platform for the long term.
“Ultimately, it was a decision about an opportunity to build the asset class over the period of the business from scratch, but largely with the same team… to allow us to capitalise on the massive growth we continue to see,” Mr Urquieta said.
Neuberger Berman sees the importance of getting this specialist knowledge to understand the complexity and diverse nature of emerging market debt.
“It is a very bottom-up approach you have to take,” Mr Urquieta said, referring to Latin American debt and adding that “you have to understand those markets”.
In the current low-yield environment, the firm believes it is increasingly important to have a large emerging market component to its fixed income team.
Mr Urquieta highlighted the fact that fixed income investors are “searching for yield” and that emerging market local bonds continue to offer relatively high yields, while investors can also benefit from undervalued currencies.
Neuberger Berman also sees a structural shift in the long term, with emerging markets increasingly evolving along the lines of developed capital markets in the west and requiring the same specialist knowledge and skills sets.
“It is evolving. If you think, for example, how the capital markets function… In the US market it is not the same person who is doing treasuries or credits, so we are moving into the same type of set-up in emerging markets,” Mr Urquieta said.
“We are finally being a bit more refined about segments in emerging markets and we are set up along those lines.”
