Standard Life Investments is celebrating the first anniversary of its GBP43m Strategic Bond Fund.

The fund, which has a flexible mandate that embraces a holistic approach to investing in fixed income, has outperformed its benchmark (50 per cent Iboxx All Stocks Corporates and 50 per cent Iboxx All Stock Gilts) since launch, returning 15.6 per cent to investors.

Andrew Sutherland (pictured), manager of the Strategic Bond Fund and head of credit at Standard Life Investments, says: “The performance generated through the fully integrated fixed income investment approach we are adopting, coupled with our Focus on Change investment philosophy, is encouraging bearing in mind the unusual market conditions we have been navigating since the fund’s launch. To date, the fund has benefited in particular from being overweight in investment grade credit and having exposure to high yield and index-linked bonds.

“The fund is actively managed and its performance has benefitted from the breadth of our team of 25 fixed income investment professionals in Edinburgh and Boston. 2009 was very much a credit story – 2010 will be very different and the fund has all the stock picking and strategic positioning skills of our team in place to provide strong performance against the benchmark over the investment cycle – through good times and bad for credit.”

The fund can also take positions in derivatives including futures, inflation or interest rate swaps and credit default swaps to further enhance returns and minimise risk. It is aimed primarily at investors with a long term time horizon who are keen to invest in an actively managed fixed income strategy or are looking to form the longer term core fixed income element of their portfolio.