ECM Asset Management Limited (ECM) is fully owned by Wells Fargo & Company and operates as an autonomous boutique. ECM has a pure focus on fixed income with a speciality in credit.

ECM has capabilities across a full range of credit sectors within global fixed income. Founded in 1999, ECM manages assets worth $8 billion (as at March 2014) on behalf of a wide range of institutional investors worldwide, including UK local authorities and pension funds.

At ECM we believe in:

• Expertise in credit management through a culture encouraging teamwork and thought leadership.
• Disciplined, responsible investing where we underwrite the credit as though we are making a direct loan to the company.
• A top-down strategic view on asset allocation including asset classes, duration, countries and ratings that draws upon our forecast of the credit and economic cycle.
• A consistent and transparent investment process rigorously applied and supported by a comprehensive risk management framework.
• Delivering strong risk adjusted total returns over the credit cycle.

Client Solutions
ECM offers clients the ability to invest in multi asset class credit strategies as well as single credit asset class solutions.

Multi Asset Class Credit: ECM offers clients Multi Asset Class Credit strategies with the capacity to allocate to opportunities across the entire credit spectrum, from Corporates and Financials, High Yield, Emerging Markets to ABS as well as Senior Secured Loans.

From this initial opportunity set, based on risk and return objectives, some clients may choose to focus solely on investment grade opportunities, whilst others may be willing to capture spread and liquidity premiums by including credit opportunities found in the sub investment grade space.

ECM’s commitment to an unconstrained, benchmark agnostic approach allows our clients to benefit from portfolios that only take intended risks by rotating portfolio exposures to those particular asset classes, sectors, issuers and countries that present the best risk-adjusted return opportunities. Specific credit asset classes may present opportunities at different points in the credit cycle and ECM’s Multi Asset Class Credit strategies aim to capitalise on this.

Our Multi Asset Class Credit strategies generally hedge interest rate risk. Through this hedging, unlike traditional bond allocations, a multi asset class credit mandate is largely insulated from potential future rises in interest rates. Should clients wish to add active interest rate management into the portfolio, ECM has a strong Rates Management team to manage this process.

Single Asset Class Credit: ECM offers clients access to single credit asset class strategies for Investment Grade Corporate bonds, Financials, High Yield, ABS and Senior Secured Loans.

ECM’s Investment Team has been constructed around specialist asset class teams, so clients can benefit from our deep understanding in any one of these particular credit areas.

Expertise in managing Investment Grade Corporate Bonds has always been an integral part of ECM’s business. Depending on our clients’ needs, we can deliver Investment Grade Corporate, Financials, High Yield, ABS and Senior Secured Loan Bond products with or without interest rate duration risk as appropriate.

Duration hedged
Hedging of interest rate and currency risk is a common feature of many ECM programmes. The interest rate risk management element of the investment process also allows value to be sought across markets enabling exposure to be solely taken to the credit risk element of individual instruments and issuers.

Investment Process
The investment process is built upon ECM’s philosophy for strong, independent, proprietary and fundamental research, including relative value and technical analysis to select the most attractive credits and industries.

The Investment Strategy Group (ISG) provides a top down allocation view on asset classes, duration, countries, cyclicality and ratings that draws upon ECM’s opinion of the credit and economic cycle, broad market trends, thematic scenarios and feedback from the Sector Review.

Research
ECM’s large and experienced research team has specialisms across the following major asset classes: Corporates, Financials, High Yield, Loans, ABS and Rates. The key objective is to avoid underperforming credits and defaults ("stock picking") as well as unfavoured sectors ("sector rotation"). Investment decisions are based on extensive fundamental and relative credit value analysis.