Fund Manager at "investing ethically"
Ian Buckell who is the fund manager for Aegon Corporate Bond Fund visited us on the 11th January
It is always useful to have face to face meetings with the people who are actually taking decisions about our clients’ money. Not only can one learn about their professional activity but one learns about them as people and this can be very very useful.
The fund invests mainly in higher-quality sterling corporate bonds while adopting ‘dark green’ ethical criteria. This is a true bond fund that invests only in bonds.
Ian told us that AEGON’s dark green screening means that he has access to about one third of the investments an unscreened fund manager would have.
Although the fund underperformed in 2008-9 mainly because they had too much exposure to the banking world he delivered solid performance in 2009-10 as bonds rebounded and he sees opportunities for growth in 2011 as many of the building society bonds are still trading at a significant premium.
His view is that inflation is more of a problem now that interest rates and expects the Bank of England to start to raise rates in from about September.
