Deals & People March 7, 2013

Great-West Adds Rocky Mountain Sales Director

Joshua Haynes was named regional sales director at Great-West Financial for the Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming markets.
Reported by

Haynes will assist brokers, financial advisers, consultants, wire houses and third-party administrators who are seeking to provide 401(k) plans to their clients.  

Haynes comes to Great-West Financial from Ascensus, where he was regional vice president responsible for expanding the firm’s recordkeeping business. From 2007 to 2009 he was a sales director for Avatar Associates, where his duties included increasing assets in target-date and risk-based funds. Before that, he was employed as a wholesaler at the Institute for Wealth Management.  

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Haynes has a textile technology degree from North Carolina State University. He holds FINRA Series 7 and 66 licenses, as well as life, accident and health insurance licenses in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah. Haynes also is a Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist.

Products March 7, 2013

Goldman Launches World Bond Fund

Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) launched the Goldman Sachs World Bond Fund (Class A Share: GWRAX). 
Reported by

The World Bond Fund is a core bond strategy that invests in fixed-income securities and currencies across the developed and emerging markets. The fund seeks to capture the importance of debt sustainability dynamics for government bond market returns, while attempting to generate higher yield and lower volatility compared to traditional funds.

“Interest rates in developed countries are being held down by central banks in an attempt to generate economic growth,” said Jonathan Beinner, co-head of GSAM Global Fixed Income and Liquidity Management and chief investment officer. “This has led to negative real yields in developed government bond markets and increased risk of currency depreciation. Recent events have also exposed weaknesses in developed markets. These developments are driving investor appetite for core fixed-income products that offer global exposure and combine higher yield and currency appreciation with lower volatility.” (See “Head of the Class: Going Global”)

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The fund is benchmarked to the recently launched Barclays Global Sovereign Fiscal Strength Index, which incorporates elements of the Barclays GDP and Fiscal Strength indices and combines them with a GSAM-developed methodology that favors countries with strong fundamentals over those under some form of fiscal stress.  

“By benchmarking the Goldman Sachs World Bond Fund to a GDP-weighted index that incorporates a debt sustainability adjustment, we are seeking the best fixed-income investment opportunities resulting from this global structural shift,” said Michael Goosay, managing director, GSAM US Fixed Income Team.

The fund allocates primarily to global sovereign bonds and sovereign-related debt. Its currency exposure is unhedged. It is offered in Class A and Class C Shares, both with $1,000 minimum initial investments. The fund also offers Institutional, Class R and Class IR Shares.

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