Emerging Markets Fixed Income – Reflecting and Revising

The “New Emerging Markets” is tradable, and money can be made… but requires a radically different approach to investing.

Reflecting on an eventful and volatile year across Emerging Markets, investors should no longer view Emerging Markets as a beta-play on a simplistic growth convergence theme – that theme is long dead. The knee jerk tendency to always buy “cheap” Emerging Markets as a re-pricing story is outdated. Instead, we view “safe” Emerging Markets, even if optically rich, as offering a better risk-reward than “cheap” Emerging Markets. “Safe” Emerging Markets is also not as boring as you think: there are ample thematic and idiosyncratic plays in Emerging Markets offering “smart” income. Separately, “Toxicity” abounds in Emerging Markets and investors need to collectively think of how to avoid “another Russia”.

Please join us for a discussion on the current Emerging Markets Fixed Income landscape and hear how we make the case for why all investors need to revise their approach towards Emerging Markets.

Speaker Biography

Amer Bisat, PhD., Managing Director, is Head of Emerging Markets Fixed Income and a member of the BlackRock Fundamental Global Fixed Income Executive Committee. In this role, he oversees the team managing the firm's Emerging Market portfolios across hard currency, local and corporate debt instruments. Mr. Bisat's service with the firm dates back to 2013.

Prior to BlackRock, Mr.Bisat was a partner in two macro hedge funds (Traxis and Rubicon), and held portfolio management responsibilities at Morgan Stanley and UBS. Between 1991 and 1998, Mr.Bisat was a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund where he helped negotiate high profile programs with Russia, Ukraine, and Egypt.

Mr. Bisat taught graduate level economics courses at Columbia University, co-authored a book on globalization, and academic and policy papers on growth and financial sector development. He is a trustee of a number of cultural and art institutions, sits on the Advisory Council of the Carnegie Middle East Center, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Bisat earned a BA in economics from the American University of Beirut and a PhD. in economics and finance from Columbia University.