Eric Williams Joins Loomis Sayles as Portfolio Manager on the Full Discretion Team

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 15, 2025--

Loomis, Sayles & Company, the global investment manager with nearly $390 billion in assets under management as of 31 December 2024, is pleased to announce that Eric Williams has joined the firm’s Full Discretion Team as a portfolio manager on their high yield and bank loan strategies.

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Eric brings extensive credit investment experience with a specialization in high yield and bank loans. He joins Loomis Sayles from Northern Trust Asset Management, where he was most recently head of capital structure and a senior portfolio manager on the global fixed income team. In this role, he had broad oversight of the actively-managed leveraged credit platform and served as the lead portfolio manager on several leveraged credit strategies.

Pioneers in multisector investing, the Full Discretion Team has $79 billion in assets under management as of 31 March 2025 across a suite of institutional strategies and fixed income funds. They are high-conviction, active credit investors who take a deep-value, equity-like approach to credit selection across global fixed income markets. In 2023, the Full Discretion Team consolidated their high yield and bank loan efforts, having recognized the ongoing convergence of the two asset classes and related structural market changes including evolving quality and liquidity profiles as well as the blending of the syndication process.

“Over his career, Eric has consistently demonstrated a disciplined investment process, superior portfolio construction and effective management skills,” said David Waldman, chief investment officer of Loomis Sayles. “Eric is inherently aligned with Loomis Sayles’ investment philosophy and we are delighted to have him join us.”

“Eric brings a specific, proven set of skills in high yield and bank loan portfolio construction and management that are highly applicable to the Full Discretion Team’s approach to those asset classes,” said Matt Eagan, executive vice president, portfolio manager and head of the Loomis Sayles Full Discretion Team. “His addition further enhances our efforts to anticipate the evolution of both the markets and our clients’ needs.”

In addition, Matt Eagan and Peter Sheehan, who are currently portfolio managers on Full Discretion’s high yield strategies, will be added as portfolio managers to the team’s bank loan portfolios to further align the bank loan strategies with the foundations of Full Discretion investing. These changes, as well as Eric’s addition to the high yield and bank loan strategies, are effective 12 May 2025.

Previously, Eric was the head of credit at Northern Trust and a senior portfolio manager for fundamental, systematic and global high yield and ESG mandates. Prior to this, he was a portfolio manager and trader, working with research analysts to evaluate fundamental risk exposures, with a focus on valuation and volatility. Earlier in his career, Eric was a portfolio analyst and associate portfolio manager. Eric earned a BA in economics from the University of Colorado and an MBA with a concentration in finance and economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Learn more about the Loomis Sayles Full Discretion Team.

ABOUT LOOMIS SAYLES

Since 1926, Loomis, Sayles & Company has helped fulfill the investment needs of institutional and mutual fund clients worldwide. The firm’s performance-driven investors integrate deep proprietary research and risk analysis to make informed, judicious decisions. Teams of portfolio managers, strategists, research analysts and traders collaborate to assess market sectors and identify investment opportunities wherever they may lie, within traditional asset classes or among a range of alternative investments. Loomis Sayles has the resources, foresight and the flexibility to look far and wide for value in broad and narrow markets in its commitment to deliver attractive, risk-adjusted returns for clients. This rich tradition has earned Loomis Sayles the trust and respect of clients worldwide, for whom it manages $389.3 billion* in assets (as of 31 December 2024).

*Includes the assets of both Loomis, Sayles & Co., LP, and Loomis Sayles Trust Company, LLC. ($47.1 billion for the Loomis Sayles Trust Company). Loomis Sayles Trust Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Loomis, Sayles & Company, L.P.

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Eric Williams joins Loomis, Sayles & Company as portfolio manager on the Full Discretion Team.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. flu infections showed signs of a slight decline last week, but health officials say it is not clear that this severe flu season has peaked.

New government data posted Friday — for flu activity through last week — showed declines in medical office visits due to flu-like illness and in the number of states reporting high flu activity.

However, some measures show this season is already surpassing the flu epidemic of last winter, one of the harshest in recent history. And experts believe there is more suffering ahead.

“This is going to be a long, hard flu season,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said, in a statement Friday.

One type of flu virus, called A H3N2, historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. So far this season, that is the type most frequently reported. Even more concerning, more than 91% of the H3N2 infections analyzed were a new version — known as the subclade K variant — that differs from the strain in this year’s flu shots.

The last flu season saw the highest overall flu hospitalization rate since the H1N1 flu pandemic 15 years ago. And child flu deaths reached 289, the worst recorded for any U.S. flu season this century — including that H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009-2010.

So far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses and 180,000 hospitalizations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. It also estimates there have been 7,400 deaths, including the deaths of at least 17 children.

Last week, 44 states reported high flu activity, down slightly from the week before. However, flu deaths and hospitalizations rose.

Determining exactly how flu season is going can be particularly tricky around the holidays. Schools are closed, and many people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

Also, some seasons see a surge in cases, then a decline, and then a second surge.

For years, federal health officials joined doctors' groups in recommending that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine. The shots may not prevent all symptoms but can prevent many infections from becoming severe, experts say.

But federal health officials on Monday announced they will no longer recommend flu vaccinations for U.S. children, saying it is a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors.

“I can’t begin to express how concerned we are about the future health of the children in this country, who already have been unnecessarily dying from the flu — a vaccine preventable disease,” said Michele Slafkosky, executive director of an advocacy organization called Families Fighting Flu.

“Now, with added confusion for parents and health care providers about childhood vaccines, I fear that flu seasons to come could be even more deadly for our youngest and most vulnerable," she said in a statement.

Flu is just one of a group of viruses that tend to strike more often in the winter. Hospitalizations from COVID-19 and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, also have been rising in recent weeks — though were not diagnosed nearly as often as flu infections, according to other federal data.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - Pharmacy manager Aylen Amestoy administers a patient with a seasonal flu vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Miami, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)