One of the world’s largest asset managers just made a bold call on sovereign debt, and it’s not the one most people would expect.
Schroders, the UK-based investment giant overseeing roughly £814 billion ($1 trillion) in assets, has built what it describes as a “significantly overweight” position in 10-year Italian government bonds. The funding source for that bet: selling down US Treasuries and German Bunds, the two instruments that have long served as the global fixed-income security blankets.
Why Italy, and why now
The logic, according to Dorian Carrell, Schroders’ head of multi-asset income, boils down to a simple thesis. Italy has absorbed its recent rounds of budget drama and political turbulence more effectively than other major sovereign issuers have handled theirs.
The positioning aligns with Schroders’ multi-asset investment views published in May 2026, which explicitly flagged Italian government bonds, known as BTPs, for their attractive yield profile. Italian bonds pay more than their German or US equivalents, and Schroders believes the extra yield is no longer justified by extra risk.
