WisdomTree Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund launches

By Toni Weeks

San Diego, March 8 - WisdomTree announced it has launched the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund to provide broad-based exposure to corporate bonds of emerging market issuers across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The fund, which trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol "EMCB," is the first product offered in connection with WisdomTree's subadvisery relationship with Western Asset Management, a subsidiary of Legg Mason. The exchange-traded fund has an expense ratio of 0.6%.

"WisdomTree is pleased to offer the first corporate bond exchange-traded fund that offers access to a rapidly growing asset class, the debt of a broad array of quality corporate issuers in the emerging markets," president and chief operating officer Bruce Lavine said in a press release. "These bonds are supported by the same favorable growth rates, attractive demographics and improving fundamentals that have driven strong relative returns in emerging market assets in general."

The fund's portfolio manager is Matthew Duda of Western Asset Management.

"While the investment process begins with an assessment of the macro and country-specific risks, company-specific factors may drive emerging market corporate bond returns to a larger extent than country-level issues as sovereign risk trends lower in this asset class over time," Duda said in the release, commenting on the fund's strategy. "We therefore combine top-down macroeconomic analysis with bottoms-up fundamental analysis of the industries and corporations essential to the ongoing industrialization and development of the emerging word."

WisdomTree Asset Management, Inc., the fund's investment adviser, is a subsidiary of New York-based ETF sponsor and asset manager WisdomTree.

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