# Virtus Stone Harbor Emerging Markets Income Fund

Virtus Stone Harbor Emerging Markets Income Fund is an Asset Manager based in New York, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Asset Manager
- **Headquarters:** New York, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** New York, NY, United States
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed
- **Website:** virtus.com

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

Launched as a closed-end fund, the vehicle draws its intellectual capital from Stone Harbor Investment Partners, a New York-based emerging-market debt specialist acquired by Virtus Investment Partners. Stone Harbor carved a narrow, deep niche through multiple market cycles, concentrating its research and trading desk exclusively on sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and corporate debt from developing economies. The fund invests across the full capital structure of emerging-market debt, blending sovereign hard-currency bonds, local-currency government obligations, and corporate credit from both investment-grade and high-yield issuers. The portfolio spans Latin America — with historical weightings in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina — alongside Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Confirmed past positions include debt from Petrobras and the Republic of Argentina, reflecting a willingness to underwrite distressed sovereigns when pricing dislocates from fundamentals. The closed-end structure allows the managers to hold less-liquid instruments without facing daily redemption pressures that plague open-end peers, an architecture that closely mimics a drawdown fund while offering exchange-traded liquidity to shareholders. Stone Harbor managed approximately $9.9 billion in emerging-market debt assets at the time Virtus completed its acquisition in 2022 (per the firm, 2022). The team operates from New York with additional analytical presence in London. The Virtus relationship provides distribution scale across wirehouses, RIAs, and institutional platforms that a standalone boutique could not access, while Stone Harbor retains autonomy over credit selection and portfolio construction. The fund sits alongside several open-end mutual funds and institutional separate accounts that Stone Harbor manages, forming one tier of a broader EM debt platform. What distinguishes this vehicle structurally is its closed-end format applied to an illiquid credit mandate. Most emerging-market debt exposure reaches investors through daily-dealing mutual funds or ETFs that must maintain deep liquidity buffers, capping their ability to exploit stressed and distressed pricing. This fund's permanent capital base enables Stone Harbor to deploy into dislocated sovereign and corporate credit without concern for forced selling during volatility — a structural posture more common in private credit drawdown funds than in publicly traded vehicles.

## Sectors

- Emerging Markets
- Fixed Income
- Private Credit
- Sovereign Debt

## Questions

### What types of emerging-market debt does the fund hold?

The portfolio spans sovereign hard-currency bonds, local-currency government obligations, and corporate credit across the full rating spectrum. Historical positioning has included Latin American sovereigns such as Brazil and Argentina, quasi-sovereign energy credits like Petrobras, and select frontier-market exposures in Africa and Southeast Asia. The mandate permits significant flexibility to rotate between investment-grade and high-yield depending on relative value.

### How does Stone Harbor source its investment ideas?

Stone Harbor relies on a dedicated emerging-market research team with deep local-market relationships, conducting on-the-ground due diligence in borrowing countries. The team's narrow mandate — exclusively emerging-market debt — means research resources concentrate on sovereign fiscal trajectories, central-bank policy dynamics, and corporate credit fundamentals rather than being diluted across developed-market mandates. Distressed sovereign situations, where they have demonstrated underwriting willingness, require direct engagement with finance ministries and multilateral institutions.

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Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

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