Facing rising interest rates, persistent inflation and fears of an expanding banking crisis in the USA, portfolio managers (PMs) of fixed-income funds classified as Article 9 (Dark Green) under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulations (SFDR) faced a complex environment during the first quarter of 2023. NordSIP was able to identify ten such funds by Nordic asset manager operating in Sweden during the first quarter of 2023.
Most funds generally outpaced their benchmark by between 0.4% and 0.6%. The performance of the top outlier seems to be driven by the fact that Pareto’s fund invests in high-yield bonds, thus trading risk for higher performance. Meanwhile, while Norron’s performance might have been assisted by the fact that its benchmark had the lowest return of the whole group, the benchmark that Danske Bank compares its fund against had the strongest performance of all.
