Investing in Fixed Income

Within fixed income, we see our capabilities in money market enhanced solutions, corporate credit strategies across investment grade and high yield as well as European fixed income. Next to that we are focused on expanding our capabilities around illiquid fixed income, ESG-compliance investing and ultra-short duration strategies. Additionally, we expect continued demand for retirement and income-oriented solutions, particularly in developed markets as a result of aging demographics.

On the back of more than 200 research & investment professionals, we cover more than 1,750 issuers (including cash) and more than 1,400 structured finance transaction with proprietary research. Our investment professionals are located around the globe. Next to our two major research and investment hubs in New York and Frankfurt, we are present in various other location around the globe including Asia, the UK and Switzerland. In addition, our fixed income clients also profit from our strong Equity expertise providing additional company access, thought leadership and input through the EQ research platform.

We unify this knowledge base in one global, transparent investment process that allows us to gather resources in a structured global framework, capturing the best investment thinking, local research and investment insights from around the world and across markets.

Our strengths in actively managed fixed income portfolios

Our beliefs

Active Portfolio Management	Inefficient capital markets offer opportunities for active management to generate high-performing solutions
Proprietary fundamental research	Information advantages through proprietary macro & micro research Active interaction with in-house, regional and sector analyst as well as ESG research providers Trend/theme recognition, allocation and security recommendation as key drivers
Consistent investment process	Accountability on research, construction and portfolio level The entire investment process is transparent, with risk/performance management at each step

Within fixed income, we continue to view longer term industry growth trends favoring our capabilities in money market enhanced solutions, corporate credit strategies across investment grade and high yield as well as European fixed income. We are focused on expanding our capabilities around illiquid fixed income, ESG-compliance investing and ultra-short duration strategies, areas where we believe we can grow market share both in our home market and abroad. Additionally, we expect continued demand for retirement and income-oriented solutions, particularly in developed markets as a result of aging demographics.

On the back of more than 200 research & investment professionals, we cover more than 1,750 issuers (including cash) and more than 1,400 structured finance transaction with proprietary research. Our investment professionals are located around the globe. In addition to our two major research and investment hubs in New York and Frankfurt, we are present in various other location around the globe including Asia, the UK and Switzerland. In addition, our fixed income clients also profit from our strong Equity expertise providing additional company access, thought leadership and input through the EQ research platform.

We unify this knowledge base in one global, transparent investment process that allows us to gather resources in a structured global framework, capturing the best investment thinking, local research and investment insights from around the world and across markets.

Strategies

We offer a wide range of fixed income strategies, both in terms of issuers and credit ratings or regions.

Multi Credit

This strategy is a holistic fixed income solution and can replace a large part of a given allocation to credit. The investment universe comprises all relevant credit subsegments including US, Euro and Emerging Markets corporate bonds, hybrid and convertible bonds as well as government and covered bonds. The strategy leverages the expertise and resources of the entire DWS Global Credit Platform as the portfolio construction team encompasses a dedicated specialist for each relevant sub-segment.

Investment Grade Corporates

Our offering of Investment Grade Corporates include these strategies:

Short Duration Credit
The Short Duration Credit strategy invests in global corporate credits with an average duration of 0-3 years. Guidelines allow for additional alpha compared to pure benchmark oriented strategy.
Global Investment Grade Credit
Global IG Corporate Credit strategy invests in corporates benchmarking against the Barclays Global Corporate Universe. Investments are mainly corporate bonds denominated in US-Dollar, Euro, and Great Britain Pound. All currency exposure is hedged back into Euro (or any other mayor currency depending on client preference).
Euro Investment Grade Credit
Investments in high grade corporate credit offers additional spreads over treasuries based on solid fundamentals. The strategy exclusively invests in Euro denominated investment grade credit.
US Investment Grade Credit
The breadth and depth of the USD IG Credit market provides investors with a large variety of issuers, yield and ratings unlike all other fixed income markets. Due to our platform capabilities we are able to deliver in-depth credit research through our global credit analysts covering more than 90% of the market capitalization (Barclays U.S. Credit Index).

High Yield

DWS is one of the pioneers in the High Yield market, starting to manage dedicated funds in the late 1990s. Our High Yield offering include

Euro High Yield
US High Yield
Global High Yield

17 dedicated High Yield analysts cover approximately 600 issuer globally. Our portfolio manager invests mainly in non-financials corporates out of a broad universe.

Emerging Markets

Our global platform capabilities allows us to offer a broad range of Fixed Income Emerging Markets Strategies including

Emerging Markets Credit Strategy investing in hard currency bonds, mainly US-Dollar, Euro hedged to US-Dollar and up to 10 per cent local currency exposure. It complements an allocation in Emerging Markets Souvereign and Corporate Debt from the developed markets.
Emerging Markets Investment Grade Credit This is a strongly growing asset class reflecting rising investor demand and market importance. Given their material presence in the aggregate IG universe, EM IG Corporates provide a complement to DM IG Corporates and EM IG Sovereigns.
Emerging Markets External Debt Investments in US-Dollar denominated Emerging Markets sovereigns and quasi-sovereign bonds. Hard currency bonds only eliminates FX risk.
Emerging Markets Opportunities Opportunistic fixed income total return strategy in “non-mainstream” emerging markets. The investment universe consists mainly of sovereigns, quasi-sovereigns municipalities and frontier debt markets. The portfolio construction is based on market know-how instead of tainted and artificial benchmark rules. The focus is on steady coupon-income over speculative capital gains.
Emerging Markets Short Duration This total return strategy is following a “total yield convergence” concept. The focus is on Investment Grade rated bonds to limit credit risk. The strategy offers yield enhancement at limited interest rate risk due to duration lower than 2 years and limited credit risk due to an average rating of BBB.
Asian Fixed Income Asia Fixed Income is a highly active portfolio and is following a benchmark agnostic total return concept. Within Emerging Markets, Asian Fixed Income is one of the fastest growing regions biased towards Investment Grade issuers. The historically limited volatility in combination with good returns create an attractive, balanced risk-return-profile.

Municipals

Municipal fixed income strategy invests in bonds issued by state and local municipalities in the United States. Taxable municipal bonds have been a strong diversifier to equities. DWS is a top asset manager for U.S. municipals with over USD 23 billion in AUM and relationships with over 50 broker-dealers to help with trade execution and efficiency in primary and secondary trading. Our long-tenured team of eight managers have 21 years of average experience together.