TCW arrives in Italy with six active funds

The listing of funds in the Italian market represents an important step of TCW’s ongoing growth in Europe. Lippman (ceo and president): “We hope in the future to add new funds”.

A new player comes directly from the US to the Italian Exchange. It’s TCW, a leading independent global asset management firm with $ 180 billion of assets under management.
TCW enters now the Italian market bringing 6 of its flagship funds, but in the future the offert could increase. “The innovative distribution channel, designed by Borsa Italiana, has created an opportunity for Italian investors to have greater access to our products”, said David Lippman, ceo and president of TCW – We hope in the future to add new funds”.
From October 28th 2015, six UCITS active funds were listed on the Italian market of the active funds at Piazza Affari: for each one there are two classes, one in euro and the other hedged on the euro/ dollar cross.
“We have chosen this innovative approach because we want to offer to investors the benefits of a real active management, while giving at the same time the liquidity and price advantages of listed instruments – Lippman added – We believe that the listing of the active funds will draw the attention in particular of institutionals investors as pension funds, FoF managers, funds selectors, family office. But we want also start to collaborate more closely with the private banks and the distribution networks”.

Development in Italy
Europe continues to be a very important market for TCW, including Italy where the company have had a number of significant institutional relationships for a many years.
In order to support its development in Italy, TCW has appointed Lonchamp Asset Management as its local representative for the distribution of its newly listed Funds. Longchamp AM is a French financial services firm specialized in Fund distribution, Asset Management and Fund solutions design across Europe.

The listed funds
Six are the TCW’s funds listed at Piazza Affari.
Three funds are focused on the US fixed income with total return or unconstrained strategies. They are: MetWest Total Return Bond Fund (a tradizional fund invested in bond); TCW Total Return Bond Fund (the Sub-Fund invests at least 50% of its net assets in mortgage-backed securities); MetWest Uncostrained Bond Fund (the Sub-Fund seeks to provide investors with positive long-term returns irrespective of general securities market conditions).
Two funds are Fixed Income on the Emerging Markets: TCW Emerging Markets Income Fund; TCW Emerging Markets Local Currency Income Fund. According to Lippman, over time, these markets will provide excellent investments for investors.
“Although we saw a weakness in the last 18 months, we believe that these economies will continue to be a source of growth and will be an opportunity when they will recover – the ceo and chairman of TCW said – They represent more than 50% of world Gdp and they have a debt/Gdp ratio of 45% against a debt/Gdp of developed countries by 100%. a
The last fund is the US equity multi-income fund: TCW Multi-Income U.S. Equities Fund. The Sub-Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets in equity securities listed and publicly traded on stock exchanges in the U.S. The investment manager will focus specifically on investing in securities that are likely to pay high dividends and he will utilise a value-oriented multi-cap strategy that seeks to acquire shares at a substantial discount to their intrinsic value. At the end, to identify opportunities, the investment manager will employ a disciplined “bottom-up” investment process, with emphasis on assessing asset/earnings/cash flow quality and dividend stability.

The TER of these funds oscillates from a minimum of 0.55% to a maximum of 1.00%.