Hartford Investment Management is starting a bank loan unit and will bring over loan investment pros from Cigna Investment Management to lead the effort. Mike Bacevich, a senior v.p., will lead the team which also includes Cliff Abramsky, Mike Ashton, John Connor, and Frank Ossino. The group will begin on April 1.
Andrew Kohnke, a managing director with Hartford, said his firm currently has a very wide range of fixed-income strategies and that the bank loan market was one of the only areas where the firm did not have a presence. "It is an opportunity to expand what we do in fixed income and provide an additional service to our clients," he explained. Hartford already manages about $92 billion in fixed-income assets.
The new Hartford loan team will focus on investments in the higher end of the leveraged loan market. The firm is looking to grow the group to north of $1 billion in assets under management over a reasonable amount of time, explained Kohnke. Loan assets may be brought over from Cigna, but the details behind that transfer were still undecided. Typically there are key-man provisions in the indentures of structured vehicles that can be tripped by the departure of a team. The investors in the vehicles can opt to move management of the CDO.