Aviva Investors strengthens multi-asset and macro team with convertible bond fund manager hires

23 December 2020

Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva plc, has strengthened its investment team with the additions of convertible bond fund managers David Clott, Shawn Mato and Brendan Ryan. They will report to Peter Fitzgerald, Chief Investment Officer, Multi-asset and Macro.

David has managed the Aviva Investors Global Convertibles Fund since its launch in 2002, with Shawn joining him on the fund in 2004. They have co-managed the Aviva Investors Global Convertibles Absolute Return Fund since its launch in 2009. They take an active investment approach, believing that convertible markets are inherently inefficient, and opportunities exist to benefit from pricing anomalies. Together, they adopt both a top-down and fundamentally-driven, bottom-up investment style, with the flexibility to invest across a global opportunity set to help capture these inefficiencies and pricing anomalies.

They join Aviva Investors from Westwood Holdings in the US, where they continued to manage both funds on a sub-delegated investment management basis since 2014. Before this, they previously managed the funds and wider convertible bond strategies at Aviva Investors, where they worked together for over 12 years. They have worked with Brendan since 2011, who was also with Aviva Investors prior to joining Westwood.

The Aviva Investors Global Convertibles Fund aims to achieve capital growth or income by investing in convertible bonds and convertible preference shares of global issuers. The Aviva Investors Global Convertibles Absolute Return Fund aims to generate positive returns over a full market cycle regardless of market conditions, by identifying convertible bonds that offer a discount to their implied value as well as attractive yield and high liquidity.

Source: Aviva