Eric Hiatt

Sells natural gas in Massachusetts and operates a fleet of barges and towboats on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers

BlackRock Advisors offers investors around the world a variety of investment products that span across asset classes, market-caps, investment styles and geographic regions. Their mandates include cash management, equity, fixed income, alternative, multi-asset and quantitative equity strategies.

Opus aims to deliver risk-adjusted results rather than the highest absolute total returns where capital preservation could be jeopardized. The firm builds a client portfolio with a yield advantage versus the corresponding benchmark by utilizing a top-down macroeconomic approach to determine sector positioning coupled with bottom-up fundamental research to invest in securities with attractive characteristics.

For active fixed-income, LBAM's decision-making process incorporates controlled duration decisions, sector decisions, and individual issue valuation decisions. They base interest rate and sector-related investment decisions on our economic growth forecast. The firm uses risk exposure analysis and risk budgeting models to quantify and manage risks associated with strategies that they design to add value relative to the benchmark index. Individual issue selections result from internal research generated by research specialists. They diversify holdings to reduce credit exposure to individual issuers. Eligible investments for core strategies include US dollar denominated investment-grade securities; for core plus strategies the universe of securities expands to include high yield. For passive bond indexing, LBAM seeks to take advantage of risk premiums as they are reflected in individual security prices. These premiums offer compensation for accepting credit and structure risks associated with individual issues. Explicit quantification and control of risks are at the heart of this investment process. The firm uses proprietary risk exposure analysis to analyze yield curve factors and spread-related factors. For each yield curve and spread factor, the portfolio is very closely matched to the index to ensure that the portfolio earns the same return as the index for any change in interest rates or change in sector spreads. Based on internally generated research, they integrate individual issue selections into the portfolio without disrupting the integrity of the portfolio structure. Holdings are diversified to reduce credit exposure to individual issuers. Eligible investments include securities included in the index, plus those that are their equivalents in terms of credit and structure risks. LBAM's high yield bond management decision-making process begins with a macro-economic framework for determining the appropriate portfolio structure according to defensive versus cyclical industries and appropriate quality orientation (between high BB to low B). Once they have established the overall structure, the firm determines specific industry weights and individual issuer selections. Their research analysts focus on identifying securities that exhibit improving credit fundamentals while avoiding those that experience deterioration in their credit quality. LBAM diversifies holdings to reduce credit exposure to individual issuers. Eligible investments include dollar denominated bonds rated below investment-grade including Rule 144A securities and the full range of structures such as pay-in-kind bonds, interest reset bonds and other instruments that are consistent with high yield investing.

GSAM SV seeks capital preservation and current income for their clients. The firm uses a team approach to manage stable value and fixed-income portfolios. The sector specialists that work with research professionals has the primary responsibility for security selection. They employ processes that are unique to each sector including: establishing initial security universes, screening to a working universe, analyzing issues and issuers and determining which securities meet their investment objectives.

Functions as a College/University

Functions as a College/University