Collis to join fixed-income specialist Standish

The former head of Asian fixed income at First State Investments, Murray Collis, is set to join Standish Mellon Asset Management Company, AsianInvestor has learned. He may be tasked with building out its Asian offering.

Collis quit First State at the end of September after 15 years with the firm “to pursue another job opportunity”, as reported. He is on gardening leave until January, according to his LinkedIn profile, and AsianInvestor had reported speculation he was to join Standard Life Investments.

But it transpires that his destination will, in fact, be Boston-headquartered fixed-income specialist Standish, a wholly owned subsidiary of BNY Mellon.

Standish is a $104 billion house that provides investment management services across the fixed-income spectrum, including corporate credit, emerging market debt, core/core plus and opportunistic (US and global) strategies. It uses quant and fundamental methods to find value.

It also offers capabilities in insurance and liability-driven investing, while some Standish staff act as dual officers of The Dreyfus Corporation and BNY Mellon.

Within emerging market debt, its targeted portfolio credit quality is BB and maintains an average of 40-100 portfolio holdings, with JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Global as benchmark.

However, Standish does not have an Asia-specific offering, and Collis may have been hired to build this out, although neither Collis nor Standish would comment for this story.

Earlier this year it emerged that China’s National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF) had signed investment-management agreements with 12 foreign fund houses for its global portfolios. Among them, Standish and Stone Harbor Investment Partners were to manage EM bond portfolios. NCSSF had $131 billion in AUM by the end of last year, by AsianInvestor numbers.

Collis had worked his way up to head of Asian fixed interest at First State over the past decade, having relocated from London to Hong Kong in 2007 to take up the regional role. Prior to that he was a portfolio manager in First State’s global fixed interest team based in London for six years.

He also spent a year as an FX portfolio manager with Colonial First State Global Asset Management in Sydney, and had worked as an FX manager in the treasury department of the State Bank of New South Wales before it was taken over by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.