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Extra Credit: Unpacking Credit Covenants

Brian Carney, CIM, Portfolio Manager, Global Credit 

Kevin Minas, CFA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager


Credit covenants are clauses in loan or bond agreements that set obligations or restrictions on borrowers to help lenders manage risk and enforce financial discipline. Mawer analyzes these covenants because they impact risk assessment and investment decisions, with leveraged loans generally having stricter terms than high yield bonds or investment grade issuers. Real-world cases like J.Crew, Chewy/PetSmart, and Serta Simmons show how weak or ambiguous covenants can be exploited, leading to tighter controls by lenders. Strong covenants are essential for protecting lenders and maintaining a security’s risk profile.

June 2025

The Art of Quality Investing: Balancing Discipline and Opportunity

Stu Morrow, CFA, Investment Counsellor

 

Quality investing focuses on identifying and investing in companies with strong, enduring fundamentals, at the right price. These companies typically possess competitive advantages, maintain dominant market positions, exhibit comfortable financial leverage, generate sustainable free cash flow, and are led by management teams with a history of deploying capital effectively. This article will delve into the characteristics of quality companies, the metrics used to quantify quality, and the durability of quality through market cycles.

May 2025

Fixed Income Allocations for 2025 and Beyond A Playbook for Investors

Brian Carney, CIM, Portfolio Manager, Global Credit 

Kevin Minas, CFA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager
 



Credit valuations appear elevated, global debt levels are high and rising quickly, and persistent fiscal imbalances risk undermining market confidence. In this piece, we discuss how investors should consider navigating the current uncertainty while improving the long-term prospects of their fixed income allocation. 

April 2025

Dead Reckoning: Investing Lessons from the High Seas

Rob Campbell, CFA, Institutional Portfolio Manager



This article will illustrate several ideations and tools investors can incorporate into their processes to navigate the choppy, mercurial waters of long-term investing.

January 2025

Unconstrained global credit: a dynamic approach to fixed income investing

Brian Carney, CIM, Portfolio Manager, Fixed Income

Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager


This paper covers what an unconstrained credit strategy is, its key benefits, and how investors can incorporate it into a well diversified portfolio.

March 2024

 

 

Enhancing portfolio outcomes through an unconstrained credit solution

Brian Carney, CIM, Portfolio Manager, Fixed Income

Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager

 

Decades of falling yields provided a tailwind for fixed income returns, but rising yields the past few years proved a nasty reality check for traditional fixed income investors. A strategic allocation to an unconstrained global credit strategy targets attractive risk-adjusted returns by dynamically managing credit risk and interest rate risk throughout the investment cycle.

March 2024 

A Case for Investing in U.S. Mid Caps

Jeff Mo, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Canadian Small Cap Equity, U.S. Mid Cap Equity

Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager

The U.S. equity market is the largest and deepest in the world. As such, it has been analyzed in many ways to determine the optimal means of gaining exposure.

January 2024

Artificial Intelligence: The Return of The Centaurs

Justin Anderson, CFA, MSc, Equity Analyst,

Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager

Recent AI breakthroughs are underscoring the power of the centaur model—humans + machines—creating something more potent than either model operating independently.

May 2023

Rising Debt and its Potential Consequences: Canada’s New Normal?

Crista Caughlin, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Fixed Income

Kevin Minas, CFA, MBA, CAIA, Institutional Portfolio Manager

We need to understand where we are in the debt super cycle to inform our investment decision making.

May 2023

The Case for Non-Predictive Decision Making

Rob Campbell, Institutional Portfolio Manager

In our view, market participants systematically underestimate the importance of vulnerabilities while correspondingly overestimating the importance of triggers. Why?

April 2023

How to Make (Good) Decisions

Paul Moroz, Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Manager

The goal of this paper is multi-purpose. First and foremost is to elevate the consideration of decision making itself. Second, recognizing that the core product of many organizations is decisions, leaders may choose very different paths in determining how they are made. Our epistemic belief is that the environment in which an organization operates plays an outsized role in the quality of the decisions made. Third, we aim to inspire thought with regards to ideas and processes that lead to better decisions; ones that can be applied to business and life, just as much as investing.

June 2022

The Past, Present, and Future of Inflation

Samir Taghiyev, Portfolio Manager, Canadian Small Cap Equity

What can we learn from past inflationary cycles? What are the main drivers of inflation today? And as investors, what should we do as the world continues to evolve?

February 2022

What Dreams May Come: Bitcoin a Revolutionary Technology or Passing Fad?

Justin Anderson, Equity Analyst

Understanding how Bitcoin works is critical for assembling the mental toolkit that will allow us to comprehend the more general role of blockchains—i.e., the role they may have in ushering in that lofty vision that reaches beyond a mere trustless currency/asset.

June 2021

How Mawer Thinks About Capacity: Global Equity Case Study

Mawer Global Research

In this piece, we’ll describe our framework for managing capacity, both for individual strategies and across our investment platform; we’ll summarize the measures we’ve taken historically to preserve our ability to add value for our existing clients; and, we’ll use our global equity strategy as a case study for how we’re evaluating capacity today.

April 2021

On Modern Monetary Theory

Paul Moroz, CFA, Chief Investment Officer

We explore the evolution of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the notable economic ideas on which it is based. We highlight some criticisms and discuss implications of MMT for economic policy and financial markets. The purpose of this paper is less focused on opining whether MMT is fundamentally sound, but rather aimed at understanding MMT's development and how the ground may shift if indeed MMT-based policies are more widely embraced. 

January 2021