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Henderson Global Investors has launched an onshore clone of its €480.3m (£379.1m) Horizon Absolute Return Fixed Income fund.

The sterling-denominated Absolute Return Fixed Income Oeic will go live on 8 August. It will join the £192.1m Henderson Credit Alpha and £69.5m Henderson Emerging Markets Debt funds in the Absolute Return sector.

Manager Daniel Beharall can use a full range of Ucits III powers to produce an annualised return of Libor plus 250 basis points. The fund will usually have 70-100 holdings and is benchmarked against three-month sterling Libor. The minimum investment on the retail share class is £1000.

Mr Beharall has 14 years' experience and manages the Horizon Absolute Return Fixed Income fund. He is backed by more than 55 fixed income analysts, including his own eight-strong absolute return team.

Of the team members, two cover emerging markets, two cover credit, one covers interest rates and one deals with risk analytics. Mr Beharall analyses interest rates, emerging markets and foreign currency. Henderson intends to hire another risk analyst for the team in due course.

Emma du Haney, investment director and eighth team member, said the fund separates its strategies into interest rates and government bonds, emerging market debt in local and hard currencies, corporate credit and foreign currency.

Each of these four areas can use directional long/short positions, according to Ms du Haney. All except foreign currency also use relative value plays such as pairs trading.

As an example, Ms du Haney cited shorting the debt of one telecoms company and going long on the debt of another, or going long on the 10-year portion of an emerging market currency yield curve and going short on a two-year timeframe.

Ms du Haney said the fund trades actively, with 100 per cent turnover once every three months. For instance, during July, the fund took profits on some of its shorts in emerging markets and put on new trades elsewhere.

Despite the greater complexity of absolute return strategies, Ms du Haney said clients were starting to see them as a core holding in a fixed income portfolio.

She said: "People are increasingly looking to take full advantage of what the fixed income markets can do. Why would you want relative fixed income returns in years when things are bad?"

She said Henderson had already been putting a lot of work into overcoming unfamiliarity with absolute return approaches in the market.

"We've done a lot to educate people. Maybe there's an element of mistrust, as there would be with anything new, but I haven't seen much of it."