The appointment usurps Dihren Shah, who was co-head of EM equities with Tubbs and who will remain as co-manager of both the onshore and offshore emerging market funds.
Soares joined BlackRock in January and has spent a couple of months settling in before being named lead manager on any of the funds.
He was most recently at Axiom International Investors where he managed the EM Equity Fund from August 2007, building the firm’s emerging market business up from inception to $1bn in assets under management.
Soares will report to BlackRock’s CIO of fundamental equity (Americas) Chris Leavy, and will work closely with Sam Vecht, head of the EEMEA equity team, Andrew Swan, head of the Asian equity team and Will Landers, head of the Latin America equity team.
The Luxembourg-domiciled BGF Emerging Markets Fund returned 121% over the past three years, versus 11.5% for the emerging markets equity sector, according to FE.
