Stone Harbor Investment Partners hired Bill Perry from Morgan Stanley (MS) as a partner and portfolio manager to build out its emerging-market corporate debt team.

Perry started with Stone Harbor in New York on Sept. 4, according to Jim Craige, a portfolio manager and partner with the firm, which oversees $56.6 billion in assets, including $47 billion of securities from developing nations. Perry will work with Chris Wilder, Stone Harbor’s London-based corporate debt portfolio manager, Craige said.

“We think corporates will grow and it’s a very labor- intensive business,” Craige said in a telephone interview from New York. “Depending on how the market develops, we’ll probably hire more people as well.”

Stone Harbor’s emerging-market assets under management have climbed 42 percent from the end of last year, Craige said. Emerging-market debt has returned 14 percent this year as the MSCI Emerging Markets stock index advanced 5.8 percent.

The average yield for dollar-denominated emerging-market debt is at a record low 4.78 percent, according to JPMorgan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Drew Benson in New York at abenson9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net