EM Debt: Active, Corporate, Indexing

• EM CORPORATE DEBT ALEJANDRO AREVALO, Investment Manager, Fixed Income – EMD, Jupiter Asset Management: EM corporate debt offers investors a potentially better risk-reward mix than sovereign debt. Despite this, most institutional allocations use emerging markets sovereign bonds to define the asset class within their policy benchmark, likely a relic of market structure long ago. Alejandro discusses why institutional investors may wish to consider increasing their strategic allocation to this important asset class, especially in context of the rising rate environment. • WHY EMD INDEXING, AND WHY NOW? LYUBKA DUSHANOVA, Senior Portfolio Strategist, Emerging Market Debt State Street Global Advisors: Emerging Markets have had their fair share of market turbulence over the past few years stemming from COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, high inflation, and a strong US dollar, among other factors. Despite this, State Street Global Advisors has continued to attract institutional investment into indexed EMD products. The strong demand for indexing in EMD is underpinned by the continued growth in the breadth and liquidity of the market, which has provided improvements in pricing and transparency. Lyubka will provide perspectives on these developments and why allocating to an index strategy in EMD makes sense for investors. • ACTIVE MANAGEMENT IN EM DEBT BILL CAMPBELL, Portfolio Manager, International Fixed Income, DoubleLine: After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world and its economies continue to experience structural changes. A historic increase in the use of fiscal and monetary policies as well as disruptions in global supply chains have caused global inflation to adjust to structurally higher levels. Emerging markets will face risks due to these changes, but there are also opportunities being created both fundamentally and in valuations across the EMD asset class. At DoubleLine, we believe that active management is best suited to address these important changes.