UBS is starting a fund with London-based Ashmore Investment Management to buy distressed emerging-market assets as part of a growing effort to find private ways to relieve banks and insurance companies of hard-to-trade investments.

The Ashmore Global Consolidation & Recovery Fund is starting this week with $100m (€75.5m) in assets, mainly Asian bonds and loans, transferred by UBS, according to people familiar with the fund. By contributing those assets, UBS will become an investor in the fund. It also will seek to earn fees by enticing other financial firms to follow its lead.