Ashmore expands share classes

The company will add sterling share classes for each fund of the two Luxembourg-based Sicavs Ashmore Emerging Market Debt and Ashmore Local Currency

Mark Coombs, chief executive at Ashmore, said it had decided to launch the new share classes following growing interest from UK investors.

He said: "This will provide the vehicles for them to access two more of our themes, external debt and local currency, alongside our existing Ashmore Global Opportunities product, the other sterling offering we currently provide."

Coombs said there was a growing demand for emerging debt and currency exposure in the current market environment.

He added: "Emerging debt and currencies are offering value not seen for a decade and provide a more balanced risk/return trade-off than equities at this point.”

Jerome Booth, head of research at Ashmore, said the debt and currencies were a strong diversification theme for investors, helping to reduce risk.

Booth said: "Emerging countries stand out as not suffering directly from the de-leveraging process of credit crunch.

"Rather, emerging economies are impacted by collateral damage, mainly in the form of reduced cross-border flows and exports drying up."

He said recoveries are likely to emerge in larger countries in the region, regardless of what is happening in developed markets.

"There are no systemic banking crises in Latin America or Asia as there are in developed markets," he added.

"Sovereign default risk in these two regions has barely increased in our view, and in Eastern Europe where there are greater risks, there is also increased IMF and other resources to cope with them."