Winner  Legg Mason Brandywine Global Asset Management

Zenith says: Zenith’s elevated levels of conviction in the Legg Mason Brandywine fund continue to be underpinned by our regard for its most senior investment personnel and co-portfolio managers, Stephen Smith and David Hoffman. Collectively, this duo has extensive market experience and an established track record. Adhering to a high-conviction, value-driven approach, Brandywine seeks to generate returns across global sovereign, currency and, to a lesser extent, credit, with the team seeking to generate competitive outcomes when viewed in both absolute and relative terms.
– Andrew Yap, head of multi asset and income research

Zenith sector review: Zenith has continued to extend its coverage in this category across a range of high-quality investment products, not least within our “unconstrained” and “alternative debt” sub-sectors. Performance across this category continues to be strongly influenced by active rate and currency strategies, with many sector participants seeking to benefit from the anticipated unwinding of central bank intervention. In an environment of increased market volatility, many sector participants have also improved portfolio outcomes through sector rotation strategies.

Beau Titchkosky, head of sales, Legg Mason Australia and New Zealand (pictured): We think there’s a specific role for global fixed income to play in investors’ portfolios, and I think now more than ever you need to be unconstrained in your global fixed income approach. The key thing for us is that you need a global fixed income manager that can move away from the benchmark. It’s going to be harder and harder to find those key markets to generate real returns for investors and we think you need to be unconstrained to do that. That’s where experience really counts, and the team at Brandywine has been managing investors’ money – now over $US50 billion – and they’ve now got a number of experienced portfolio managers who have, in many cases, been through these cycles before.

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