Read and Causer: Why you should be buying bank debt

Invesco Perpetual's co-head of fixed income, Paul Read, has told investors now is the time to be bullish on bank debt in the UK, US and Europe, with valuations at three-year lows despite huge improvements in balance sheets.

Read, who along with colleague Paul Causer runs portfolios including the £5.3bn Corporate Bond fund, £299m Tactical Bond fund, and the £3bn Monthly Income Plus fund, has seen performance plunge across the range in the short term having taken a bet on bank debt. However, Read said he expects the positions to come good over the next three years, as investors reward banks for the way they have repaired balance sheets. “We are bullish from a fixed income point of view on a lot of the big northern European banks, the big US banks, and obviously the big UK banks,” he said. “The sector ha...