Beharall, who is head of emerging markets fixed income at the group, will be supported by Sailesh Lad, deputy portfolio manager and Mikhail Volodchenko as market analyst.
The fund, which was seeded with $100m, aims to deliver a positive total return in excess of cash on a rolling 12-month basis, regardless of market conditions by taking long and short net exposures to emerging market fixed interest securities, also using foreign exchange and derivatives.
The Luxembourg-based Sicav, which is based on a strategy that has been run for an institutional client since January 2012, will sit in the IMA Targeted Absolute Return sector.
It will be subject to a 10% performance fee, subject to a high watermark, which will be accrued daily and paid annually. AMCs will be 90bps, 65bps and 55bps for clean, institutional and super institutional respectively.
Ignis said while the fund was not currently available for distribution, it was seeking registrations for Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK, which would take effect once the fund began receiving assets.
Beharall also currently runs life company mandates, to the value of roughly £420m.
Beharall said: “Emerging market debt is a highly attractive market in which to target absolute returns. The emerging market debt universe has a market cap in excess of $5trn and this improvement in liquidity has opened up a wide range of relative value and trading strategies.”
He added: “Within these it is possible to create sets of strategies that are intrinsically different to one another and provide distinct sources of alpha – an attractive opportunity-set that is still relatively underplayed.”
