Earlier this month, Germany just issued a 10-year bullet bond with price above par at 102.6. As such, investors that have mandates to invest in safe assets such as pension funds would have to pay 102 euros and receive 100 euros after 10 years if they were to buy this bullet bond. With more lower interest rates anticipated in the coming years, investors are expecting more negatively yielded bonds to be issued.

Faced with such an environment, asset managers worldwide are increasing their attention and investments in Asian local currency bonds. The Asset Benchmark Research (ABR) ranks investment companies based on the number of nominations received for Astute Investors in each firm. The ranking of Astute Investors was collated from nominations cast by sellside individuals who have direct dealings with portfolio managers.

This year, over 300 sellside individuals across the region voted for this annual ranking. To better reflect the granularity of the investment communities across the Asia-Pacific region, for the first time, ABR is segregating the buyside firms this year based on institution types – asset managers, banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, private banks, securities firms, sovereign wealth funds, and trust companies – according to their countries.

To view the full buyside firm ranking, please click here.

To view the ranking of the top-ranked Astute Investors in Asian local currency bonds for 2019, please click here.