The purchase of Artio by Aberdeen will help the Scots asset manager grow significantly in the fixed income space, Aberdeen’s Gary Marshall told MFWire this afternoon.

For example, Marshall said that Artio has a “very interesting, well-regarded high yield product, which we view as a very interesting asset class.”

“This is something we have been attempting to develop along that route. We ourselves are in the early stages in this, while they are already well-developed,” he said. “This is of particular attraction to us not only within the United States, but we see opportunities for distributing high yield products globally.”

Marshall said that Artio also has “a very attractive, highly rated institutional class Total Return Bond Fund, which is interesting to us because although it is classified as fitting with the U.S. domestic bond fund category, it has the ability to invest up to 40 percent of its assets globally.”

“That is something that is very appealing to us, it has a competitive edge,” he says.

Marshall said that over the long term, Aberdeen will be able to add significant value to these Artio debt products by expanding them beyond the sovereign debt offerings which Artio currently relies upon to gain access to global debt.

“With the resources that we have on the ground around the world, we ought to be able to provide a much wider range of debt offerings for that product,” he said. “The opportunity for enhancement over time is interesting. We can take what is clearly a class-leading product and make it world-leading if we get the combination right.”

A related benefit of this deal, according to Marshall, is the access it will give Aberdeen to the fixed income fund market in general.

“This will move us forward very significantly in the area of fixed income,” he said.

Meanwhile, Marshall said that over time, Aberdeen’s equity team will work to bring stability to Artio’s equity funds, which had seen outflows last year.

Marshall said that he and his colleagues had been focused on this deal for “about a month or two,” spending “a lot of time looking at it.”

“This feels very comfortable,” he said. “We’ve got something that should be a good, complimentary fit.” 

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