The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

HLB Private Bank, Lombard Odier
HLB Private Bank has unveiled its HLB Chief Investment Office Fund, a wholesale fund from HLB’s chief investment office.

The fund is a foundation for all future portfolio construction across the bank, Hong Leong Bank, to give its full name, said in a statement yesterday. 

Investors are able to tap into HLB’s expertise alongside the investment prowess and institutional scale of Switzerland’s Lombard Odier. HLB is a strategic partner to Lombard Odier.

The HLB CIO Fund gives clients access to active fund managers, passive instruments, and high-conviction direct equity holdings, handpicked from more than 50,000 global funds. The fund team generates cash for investors by capturing equity dividends, fixed-income coupons, and systematic options strategies. This ensures that capital growth is paired with consistent portfolio income.

“The true strength of the HLB CIO Fund lies in how we curate and deliver elite investment solutions to our clients,” Jeffrey Yap, HLB’s managing director and regional head of wealth management, said. “We have always advocated for strategic diversification as a solid foundation for long-term portfolio growth, and we look to provide investors with what we believe to be the best strategies and advisory available to achieve this.”

Baillie Gifford
Investment manager Baillie Gifford yesterday opened the Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund (BAGEY) to eligible investors in the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands, subject to applicable laws, regulations, and distribution restrictions. This next phase extends regulated tokenised funds beyond cash management into actively managed fixed income.

The fund is designed for digital-market participants seeking access to an actively managed fixed-income strategy not previously available in tokenised form. The firm said it is seeing interest from investors who already have onchain capabilities, and crypto native investors, including family offices. It also expects the fund to be a good entry point for traditional clients who want to test out digital assets, such as DC pension and financial advisory platforms and wealth managers.

Money-market funds have shown that regulated investment products can operate onchain. BAGEY builds on that foundation as a US dollar-denominated, UK-regulated OEIC investing in a portfolio of government and corporate bonds. The strategy brings actively managed, short-duration fixed income onto the same infrastructure in pursuit of enhanced yield relative to its benchmark. The portfolio offers a yield of about 7 per cent in dollars, two-year duration and an average credit quality of BBB.

BAGEY is available exclusively as a natively issued tokenised fund. Deployment will start on Ethereum, with Solana to follow. As a fully native tokenised fund, each token represents an investor’s holding, and the blockchain is the legal record of ownership. Eligible professional investors can access and hold the Fund through regulated digital asset custodians, including BNY, Anchorage Digital, Archax and BitGo Bank & Trust.