PIMCO co-founder and CIO William H Gross is leaving the firm to join Janus Capital Group where he will manage the recently launched Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and related strategies.
Gross joins Myron Scholes, PhD, and other members of the Janus team focused on global asset allocation. His employment will be effective 29 September, 2014 and he will begin managing the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and related strategies from 6 October, 2014.
PIMCO has a succession plan in place and its Management Board, comprised of its Managing Directors, is expected to confirm shortly the election of a new Chief Investment Officer. Relevant portfolio management assignments will also be announced at that time.
PIMCO chief executive officer Douglas Hodge says: “While we are grateful for everything Bill contributed to building our firm and delivering value to PIMCO’s clients, over the course of this year it became increasingly clear that the firm’s leadership and Bill have fundamental differences about how to take PIMCO forward.
“As part of our responsibilities to our clients, employees and parent, PIMCO has been developing a succession plan for some time to ensure that the firm is well prepared to manage a seamless leadership transition in its Portfolio Management team. Earlier this year, the firm established a new portfolio management leadership structure that reflects our long-held belief that the best approach for PIMCO’s clients and our firm is to evolve our investment leadership structure to a team of seasoned, highly skilled investors overseeing all areas of PIMCO’s investment activities.”
Gross will be based in a new Janus office to be established in Newport Beach, California and will be responsible for building-out the firm’s efforts in global macro fixed income strategies. His concentration on such strategies will be separate and complementary to Janus’ existing and highly successful credit-based fixed income platform, built under the leadership of Janus’ Fixed Income Chief Investment Officer, Gibson Smith.
“Bill Gross has an exemplary track record with decades of success and he will offer an exceptional approach to navigating today’s increasingly risky markets with a focus on macro, unconstrained strategies. His involvement provides Janus a unique opportunity to offer strategies and products that are highly complementary to those already managed by our credit-based fixed income team,” says Richard M Weil, Chief Executive Officer of Janus Capital Group. “With Bill leading our global macro efforts and Gibson our credit-based fixed income team, I am confident Janus will be able to meet the needs of virtually any client.”
“I look forward to returning my full focus to the fixed income markets and investing, giving up many of the complexities that go with managing a large, complicated organisation,” says Gross. “I chose Janus as my next home because of my long standing relationship with and respect for CEO Dick Weil and my desire to get back to spending the bulk of my day managing client assets. I look forward to a mutually supportive partnership with Fixed Income CIO Gibson Smith and his team; they have delivered excellent results across their strategies, which deserve more attention.”
