Hartford Investment Management has hired Bhalendu Deshpande from Fleet Securities as a senior credit analyst. Deshpande will cover aerospace and defense, real estate, environmental services, industrial/manufacturing and metals and mining sectors. The group also added a junior analyst, Todd Jorgense from the firm's loan operations. It is also looking to add one more analyst by July 4 and is actively interviewing, said Michael Bacevich, managing director. Deshpande said he had been contemplating a move to the buyside and thought this was a great platform. "It's a more comprehensive experience, touches all bases," he said.
Since its inception in April 2004, the group has grown from $750 million under management to about $1.5 billion. It is currently in the market with a CLO and recently launched a retail mutual bank loan fund. "The goal is steady prudent growth," Bacevich said. "We're not here to be the biggest; we just want to be the best. It just happens that the past 12 months have been a banner year for loan new issue. It allowed us to grow without compromising our investment strategy."
Despite the growth the firm has seen in the strong primary market, Bacevich said the rocky nature of the last few weeks has allowed more activity in the secondary. "The last 12-18 months, the secondary market has just been too expensive to be an active buyer," he said. "But the prices have gone down and we have done more trading in the past two weeks than we have for the last year."