UK – Standard Asset Management has added to its emerging market bond team, hiring three of Invesco’s emerging market bond team.

John Cleary, who was head of the emerging market bond fund management team at Invesco UK, has been appointed to oversee the emerging markets portfolios of Standard Asset Management globally.

Also appointed are Simon Lue-Fong and Jonathan Mann who worked with Cleary at Invesco for several years. At Invesco, their responsibilities included managing the Invesco GT Emerging Market Bond Fund, and the Invesco GT Global High Income Fund.

A spokeswoman for Invesco said that the management of these funds would now be taken care of by the rest of the fixed income team.

Of the 1.6 billion dollars managed in a combination of total return and hedge fund products by Standard Asset Management, approximately one billion dollars is invested in emerging market bonds.

Charles Minnaar, senior vice president of Standard AM, said: “We are very focused on emerging markets as a bank, and asset management has grown out of that, so emerging market fixed income is an area in which we feel we have a competitive advantage.”

He added that the appointments formed part of the company’s strategy to build on the business and expand.

Standard Asset Management is the asset management arm for Standard Bank’s business outside of Africa.