PIMCO has elected Daniel Ivascyn to serve as Group Chief Investment Officer (“Group CIO”), succeeding William H. Gross who has left the firm. In addition, the firm appointed Andrew Balls, CIO Global; Mark Kiesel, CIO Global Credit; Virginie Maisonneuve, CIO Equities; Scott Mather, CIO U.S. Core Strategies; and Mihir Worah, CIO Real Return and Asset Allocation. Douglas Hodge, PIMCO’s Chief Executive Officer, and Lew “Jay” Jacobs, President, will continue to serve as the firm’s senior executive leadership team, spearheading PIMCO’s business strategy, client service and the firm’s operation.
The firm also appointed Mr. Mather, Mr. Kiesel and Mr. Worah as Portfolio Managers for the Total Return Fund. Saumil Parikh, Mohsen Fahmi, and Mr. Ivascyn will serve as Portfolio Managers for the Unconstrained Bond Fund. As Group CIO, Mr. Ivascyn will continue to oversee the firm’s alternatives strategies, structured credit, and income strategies. Chris Dialynas, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager, will return to the firm from sabbatical during the fourth quarter of 2014. These changes and appointments are effective immediately.
Said Mr. Hodge: “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. We have passed the torch of leadership to a team of investors who are among the very best in the investment management industry. They are seasoned, highly skilled professionals who embody PIMCO’s values and have established track records of delivering value to clients.”
Mr. Hodge continued: “Today’s announcement marks the completion of our portfolio management succession process. These appointments are a continuation of the structure that PIMCO established earlier in 2014 and they reflect 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.”
Said Mr. Ivascyn: “We have assembled a team of world-class investors over the course of many years, and established a time-tested top-down, bottom-up investment process that will guide our investment philosophy and continue to serve our clients well into the future. Our CIO’s and I are fully committed to consistently deliver to our clients the investment excellence that they have rightly come to expect of us.”
Under this leadership structure, Mr. Balls and Mr. Worah have additional managerial responsibility for PIMCO’s Portfolio Management group and trade floor activities globally. Mr. Balls will oversee Portfolio Management in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and Mr. Worah will oversee Portfolio Management in the U.S.
Said Michael Diekmann, Chief Executive Officer of Allianz Group: “Since becoming part of the Allianz Group in 2000, PIMCO has grown enormously and contributed consistently to Allianz’s success. We join our PIMCO colleagues in recognizing Bill Gross for his accomplishments over the 43 years since PIMCO’s founding. We wish Bill good luck. The management and investment structure put in place in January as well as the thorough succession planning gives us complete confidence in PIMCO’s investment and executive leadership team.”
Said the Independent Trustees for PIMCO’s fixed income and equity mutual funds and the Chairman of PIMCO’s closed-end funds: ”We are “fully supportive of PIMCO, its executive leadership and its portfolio management teams. They have our complete confidence.”
Mr. Ivascyn added: “We have a deep bench of talent with extensive investment and leadership experience, including more than 240 portfolio managers globally, and our outstanding team around the world gives us the scale, talent, expertise and commitment to manage this transition. We will continue to add and promote talent at all levels to help us drive our firm forward.”
Professional biographies (in alphabetical order):
Andrew Balls
Mr. Balls is CIO Global, a managing director in the London office and a member of the Investment Committee. He is head of European portfolio management, leading PIMCO’s European investment team (which is based in London and Munich), and he also oversees PIMCO’s investment teams in the Asia Pacific region. He manages a range of global and European portfolios, including PIMCO’s Global Advantage strategy, combining developed and emerging fixed income markets. Mr. Balls was previously a portfolio manager in Newport Beach and the firm’s global strategist. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2006, he spent eight years at the Financial Times as an economics correspondent and columnist in London, New York and Washington, DC. He has 16 years of investment experience and holds a bachelor’s degree from Oxford and a master’s degree from Harvard University. He was a lecturer in economics at Keble College, Oxford.
Chris Dialynas
Mr. Dialynas is a managing director in the Newport Beach office, a portfolio manager, and a member of PIMCO’s Investment Committee. He has written extensively and lectured on the topic of fixed-income investing. Mr. Dialynas served on the editorial board of The Journal of Portfolio Management and was a member of the Fixed Income Curriculum Committee of the Association for Investment Management and Research. He has 36 years of investment experience and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College. He joined PIMCO in 1980.
Mohsen Fahmi
Mr. Fahmi is a managing director and generalist portfolio manager in the Newport Beach office, focusing on global fixed income assets. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2014, he was with Moore Capital Management, most recently as a senior portfolio manager and previously as chief operating officer. In London earlier in his career, he was co-head of bond and currency proprietary trading at Tokai Bank Europe, head of leveraged investment at Salomon Brothers and executive director of proprietary trading at Goldman Sachs. Prior to this, he was a proprietary trader for J.P. Morgan in both New York and London, and he also spent seven years as an investment officer at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He has 30 years of investment experience and holds an MBA from Stanford University. He received a master’s degree in civil engineering from the Ohio State University and an undergraduate degree from Ain Shams University, Cairo.
Daniel J. Ivascyn
Mr. Ivascyn is Group CIO, and a managing director in the Newport Beach office. He is the head of the mortgage credit portfolio management team and a lead portfolio manager for PIMCO’s credit hedge fund and mortgage opportunistic strategies. Mr. Ivascyn is a member of PIMCO’s Executive Committee and a member of the Investment Committee. Morningstar named him Fixed-Income Fund Manager of the Year (U.S.) for 2013. Prior to joining PIMCO in 1998, he worked at Bear Stearns in the asset-backed securities group, as well as T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Investments. He has 23 years of investment experience and holds an MBA in analytic finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Occidental College.
Mark R. Kiesel
Mr. Kiesel is CIO Global Credit and a managing director in the Newport Beach office. He is a member of the PIMCO Investment Committee, a generalist portfolio manager and the global head of corporate bond portfolio management, with oversight for the firm’s investment grade, high yield, bank loan, municipal and insurance business as well as credit research. Morningstar named him Fixed-Income Fund Manager of the Year in 2012 and a finalist in 2010. He has written extensively on the topic of global credit markets, founded the firm’s Global Credit Perspectives publication and regularly appears in the financial media. He joined PIMCO in 1996 and previously served as PIMCO’s global head of investment grade corporate bonds and as a senior credit analyst. He has 22 years of investment experience and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.
Virginie Maisonneuve, CFA
Ms. Maisonneuve is CIO Equities, managing director, global head of equities and portfolio manager based in the London office. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2014, she was head of global and international equities at Schroders plc. Previously, she was co-CIO and director at Clay Finlay, a portfolio manager at State Street Research and Management, and a portfolio manager at Batterymarch Financial Management. She has 27 years of investment experience and holds an MBA from the Ecole Superieure Libre des Sciences Commerciales Appliquees (ESLSCA) in Paris. She also holds a master’s degree in Mandarin Chinese from Dauphine University in Paris and an undergraduate degree from People’s University (Renda) in Beijing.
Scott A. Mather
Mr. Mather is CIO U.S. Core Strategies, and a managing director in the Newport Beach office and head of global portfolio management. Previously, he led portfolio management in Europe, managed euro and pan-European portfolios and worked closely with many Allianz-related companies. He also served as a managing director of Allianz Global Investors KAG. Prior to these roles, Mr. Mather co-headed PIMCO’s mortgage- and asset-backed securities team. Prior to joining PIMCO in 1998, he was a fixed income trader specializing in mortgage-backed securities at Goldman Sachs in New York. He has 20 years of investment experience and holds a master’s degree in engineering, as well as undergraduate degrees, from the University of Pennsylvania.
Saumil H. Parikh, CFA
Mr. Parikh is a managing director in the Newport Beach office and generalist portfolio manager. Mr. Parikh is also a member of the PIMCO Investment Committee and leads the firm’s cyclical economic forums. He previously served as a specialist portfolio manager on the short-term, mortgage and global portfolio management teams. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2000, Mr. Parikh was a financial economist and market strategist at UBS Warburg. He has 15 years of investment experience and holds undergraduate degrees in economics and biology from Grinnell College.
Mihir P. Worah
Mr. Worah is CIO Return and Asset Allocation, and a managing director in the Newport Beach office, a portfolio manager, and head of the real return and multi-asset portfolio management teams. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2001, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where he built models to explain the difference between matter and anti-matter. In 2012 he co-authored “Intelligent Commodity Indexing,” published by McGraw-Hill. He has 12 years of investment experience and holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago.