Oaktree Capital Group has recruited Julio Herrera to manage a new Emerging Market Opportunities investment strategy focused on distressed and dislocated corporate and sovereign debt.

Prior to joining Oaktree, Herrera was president of Fintech Advisory, which manages a multi-billion dollar emerging market portfolio.

Herrera has more than 20 years of experience investing in undervalued and distressed assets in emerging markets.

“We’re delighted to have Julio join our team,” says Howard Marks, chairman of Oaktree. “He has extensive experience investing in distressed assets in the emerging markets and shares Oaktree’s bottom-up, value-oriented investment approach. We’re particularly pleased to have Julio lead the charge for Oaktree in this very rapidly growing asset class, which is already approaching USD1trn in size.”

Herrera says: “I’m excited and honoured to build and lead a team that will work to continue Oaktree’s mission of delivering consistent, superior risk-adjusted performance to its clients. Our new Emerging Market Opportunities strategy is a natural extension of Oaktree’s business and will be based on the same fundamental credit analysis, valuation discipline and bias towards risk control.”

Prior to joining Fintech in 1997, Herrera headed emerging market corporate fixed income research for Lehman Brothers, where he was responsible for restructuring Latin American distressed assets. Prior to Lehman Brothers, he was a vice president at ING Capital Holdings as a proprietary trading analyst. He began his investment career as a credit analyst and portfolio manager at RRH Capital Management.