By Jennifer Ablan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlueMountain Capital Management on Tuesday said it hired four portfolio managers to build out the hedge fund's new fixed-income strategy focused on relative-value investments in G7 government bonds, U.S. municipal bonds, agency ABS and emerging market debt.
Morgan Alcalay, Evan Boulukos, Phil Hermann and Andrew Seiz have joined the $22 billion New York-based firm and will report to Colin Teichholtz, head of global governments and agency mortgages.
Andrew Feldstein, co-founder and chief investment officer of BlueMountain, said investor and regulatory constraints, market fragmentation, large flows and issuance and increased volatility are creating opportunities for relative-value investing.
"With the reduction in Wall Street’s balance sheets and proprietary trading since the financial crisis, we see an opportunity for BlueMountain to become a new liquidity provider to the market," he said.
Stephen Siderow, co-founder and co-president at BlueMountain, added that they are taking advantage of what the firm believes will be greater market dislocation and volatility.
"I think an end to global central banks' unified, unison monetary policies -- the U.S., Asia, Europe and emerging markets -- creates potential relative value," Siderow said.
Alcalay joins as portfolio manager of interest rates and will focus on relative-value investment opportunities in developed nation government debt. Before joining BlueMountain, he traded U.S. Treasuries at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) and traded and STRIPS at Barclays (LON:BARC) Plc.
Boulukos joins as portfolio manager of municipal bonds. Prior to joining BlueMountain, he was a managing director in the municipal securities division at Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), where he managed a proprietary municipal bond portfolio. Before Citigroup, he was an institutional municipal flow trader at Lehman Brothers.
Hermann joins as portfolio manager of agency MBS. Previously, he traded agency MBS at Pine River Capital.
Seiz joins as portfolio manager for emerging market debt, including sovereign, quasi sovereign, bank and corporate debt. Previously, Seiz was a portfolio manager at Pine River Capital, focused on emerging markets fixed income.