ORIX Capital Markets (OCM) is looking to hire eight senior fixed-income credit analysts over the next two months to join its 20-person corporate finance group, which invests chiefly in below investment-grade and Latin American debt. The corporate finance group will also move from Baltimore to join its commercial mortgage securities investing and servicing team at its 270-person Dallas headquarters in March, according to Sheppard Davis, head of the group. OCM has built a new trading floor in Dallas to accommodate the group. Davis would not specify total taxable fixed-income assets under management, though he says it is in the "multiple billions" of dollars.
Davis says OCM wants to build the team to take advantage of investment opportunities in below investment-grade credits. "We think this is a research business, and we like to do all the research ourselves," he says. OCM does strictly proprietary investing.
Davis says OCM will likely assign six of the new analysts to high-yield, crossover, and distressed credits and two to Latin American debt. He says the firm will look for raw analytical ability rather than specific sector expertise, on the premise that the latter is more easily learned. He says OCM favors Latin America over other emerging markets regions, because its markets are more mature. Sectors the firm favors include deep cyclicals, such as paper and packaging, and defensive industries such as cable, food, drugs, and healthcare. OCM is a division of ORIX Corp.