Bank of Valletta employees authorised to promote Valletta Fund Management’s range of investment funds recently attended VFM’s Annual Seminar. The aim of the seminar is to update those present with the recent market highlights as well as to give them an update of VFM’s range of local and international funds.

Peter Perotti, Chief Officer at VFM, welcomed those present and stated that in these turbulent times and highly volatile markets Collective Investment Schemes offer a number of advantages including an underlying diversified portfolio, liquidity and also active management by professional fund managers. In the current environment it is therefore useful to include professionally managed funds as an integral part of an investor’s portfolio.

The guest speaker at the Annual Seminar was Azhar Hussain, Fund Manager and Head of High Yield and Leveraged Loans at Insight Investment Management (Global) Limited, London. Mr Hussain was relatively optimistic about the High Yield Bond Market’s prospects especially due to the fact that today the entities within this sector are less leveraged. He added that high yield corporates have healthier balance-sheets while the median leverage ratio for all rated corporates is considerably lower than that recorded in 2008.

“The third quarter of the year 2011 was a volatile and painful period as investor sentiment shifted from the hope for a second half of the year rebound from the Spring’s soft patch, into worries that the world’s largest economies are headed into a double dip recession. All this compiled with the weakening effects of emerging market economies”, claimed Mr Mark Vella, Head of Marketing at VFM during a session dedicated to Market Overview. He added, “The Eurozone weakening system sapped confidence from the market with many investors desperately seeking a safe haven and awaiting for more stability in the market during this period of uncertainty. Others prefer to take advantage of these slumps in the market cycle as they inevitably produce some interesting opportunities”.

During the afternoon session, Mr David Pace Ross and Mr Noel Cassar from BOV gave an update on the local market while Mr Antoine Briffa rounded off the session by reviewing the performance of the local funds managed by VFM. All speakers highlighted that despite the expected volatility in the local equity market they still believe that opportunities exist. Moreover, recent developments in Libya have eased investor concerns with the local corporate bonds market regaining its previous stability.

Lorenzo Mule’ Stagno, Managing Director of Allied Consultants closed off the seminar with a session on personal development. Besides being the Associate for Henley Business School in Malta and the Mediterranean region, Lorenzo is a Henley approved tutor and delivers course on Personal Development and Strategic Marketing for Henley Business School.