Big news at PIMCO from Marketwatch:
Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer of Pimco, has resigned, effective mid-March, the asset manager’s parent company Allianz said Tuesday. He will be replaced by Douglas Hodge, currently chief operating officer. El-Erian will stay on to advise the board, Allianz said. Founder Bill Gross will continue as chief investment officer, with managing directors Andrew Balls and Daniel Ivascyn appointed as his deputies. Pimco, which specializes in management of bond funds, has struggled in recent months as a rise in interest rates led to $41.1 billion of outflows from the firm’s signature Pimco Total Return Fund PTTRX -0.09% . The fund lost its crown as the biggest open-end mutual fund earlier this year.
El-Erian has been a genuine intellectual leader in the post-GFC period, coingin such terms as “new normal”. One wonders if he’s not a casualty of the extraordinary success of the Fed and its evil global brethren in reflating the world.
