Barings announced new leadership — and a new organizational structure — for the firm’s North American distribution.
The money manager, with $409 billion in assets under management, appointed Ilena Coyle as head of North American insurance and intermediary, and Graham Seagraves as head of North American institutional and consultant relations.
Neil Godfrey, Barings’ London-based global head of distribution, told Pensions & Investments in an interview that Coyle and Seagraves will serve as co-leaders of the firm’s distribution efforts for North America, reporting to him from the Charlotte, N.C., headquarters.
Coyle’s role marks a promotion from her prior responsibilities at Barings as a managing director, global distribution. Seagraves, meanwhile, joined Barings Oct. 1 from Russell Investment Group, where he served as managing director and head of client solutions for Russell’s Americas institutional business, according to a Barings news release. A Russell spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Coyle and Seagraves replace Britta Hion, Barings’ head of North American distribution, who left the firm to pursue other opportunities, according to a spokeswoman. Hion couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Coyle and Seagraves will “oversee the firm’s regional strategy to expand Barings’ strategic relationships with existing and prospective clients," the news release said.
Barings manages money for parent company MassMutual as well as roughly $200 billion for third-party clients.
Godfrey, in the interview, pointed to Martello Re, the reinsurance business launched in early 2022 by MassMutual and other institutional investors — with Barings managing a chunk of the firm’s investment portfolio across a range of public and private asset segments — as an example of the multiasset-class opportunities Coyle and Seagraves will increasingly focus on against a backdrop of big asset owners looking to work with fewer strategic partners.
Seagraves said in the release that Godfrey, Coyle and he will look to grow Barings’ investment platform by “deepening relationships with clients and driving growth in third-party assets under management.”
Godfrey said in the interview that breaking out insurance in delineating Coyle’s role reflects the growing importance of that client segment in the North American market, with a shift in allocations from public fixed income to a range of private asset segments playing to Barings’ strengths.
“The focus for the firm on growth is ensuring that we continue to both capture market share within the private space, where we have a really good asset mix, but also look at partnerships to accelerate the ability to get origination of transactions in the private market space,” Godfrey said.
An overview of Baring’s business as of June 30 showed investment-grade bonds with a leading $107 billion chunk of the firm’s $409 billion in AUM, complemented by $55 billion in private fixed income, $53 billion in high yield, $31 billion in private placements, $28 billion in structure credit/collateralized loan obligations, and $17 billion in sovereign and emerging markets debt.
In other private market segments, the firm had $24 billion in real estate debt, $21 billion in real estate equity and $10 billion in infrastructure debt.
