BlackRock Australia has expanded its fixed income team, appointing Michael Prljaca as a portfolio manager.
Prljaca will move from BlackRock's Singapore office, where he was head of Asia-Pacific portfolio compliance to the Sydney-based team, reporting to Craig Vardy head of indexed and enhanced portfolio management.
Steve Miller, head of fixed income at BlackRock Australia said the appointment would strengthen the team's fixed income capabilities.
"Michael's appointment coincides with a broader build-up of BlackRock's model-based fixed income capabilities, underscored by the recent launch of active portfolios utilising the model-based approach," he said.
Miller said the expanded index team is a result of the complexity of products, and because BlackRock's index funds had grown from $3 billion to $11 billion since the BlackRock BTI merger in 2009.
BlackRock launched a global fixed interest fund in January and the Australian Core Plus Bond Fund in February on the back of the process adopted from BTI's model-based team, he said.
Model-based fixed income exploits investment opportunities by applying quantitative analysis to economic relationships and behaviour, according to Miller.
"We take intuitive fundamental economic relationships and we model them … we're trying to discover whether the model can discover systematic opportunities in fixed interest markets that we might be able to exploit. We're not trying to obviate judgement, but we're trying to compliment portfolio manager judgement with the discipline of a econometric or quantitative framework," he said.
