Pimco Advisors Lp

The Newport Beach company that controls the nation's biggest bond fund manager said costs related to its pending acquisition by Allianz AG caused its fourth-quarter profit to fall 8.8% to $18.6 million, or 35 cents a unit, from $20.4 million, or 40 cents a unit, in the same quarter the previous year. Before the charges, net income rose about 3% to $21 million, or 39 cents per unit. Quarterly revenue rose 7% to $244.4 million. For the year, Pimco earned $74.3 million, or $1.43 per unit, down 2.

Bond king Bill Gross of Newport Beach-based Pimco was named Tuesday by Morningstar Inc. its bond mutual fund "manager of the decade." The financial research firm also named Bruce Berkowitz, who heads the Miami-based Fairholme Fund, domestic stock fund manager of the decade. David Herro, chief of the Oakmark International and Oakmark International Small Cap funds in Chicago, got the nod as the decade's top manager of foreign-stock funds. Karen Dolan, director of fund analysis at Morningstar in Chicago, said the firm made its choices based partly on the managers' above-average returns in the last 10 years, while also factoring in the size of the funds they managed and how well they managed risk.

Directors of Newport Beach-based investment management company Pimco Advisors Holdings LP increased the quarterly dividend to 57 cents a unit from 55 cents, payable Jan. 30 to unit holders of record Dec. 31.

Bond mutual fund titan Pimco is jumping the fence -- into stock picking. The Newport Beach firm, perhaps the world's best-known bond investor, said Monday it would expand into actively managed stock funds. The company also said it had hired Neel Kashkari, who was in charge of the Treasury's bank bailout program until departing in May and dropping out of sight to a cabin in the Northern California woods. Kashkari, a former Goldman, Sachs & Co. executive, will become Pimco's head of "new investment initiatives," including stock investing.

Fresh out of college, Bill Gross parlayed $200 into $10,000 at the Las Vegas blackjack tables, and he lives on Monte Carlo Drive in Laguna Beach. Sound like the kind of guy you'd want handling your investment portfolio? In fact, William H. Gross--Ohio native, Vietnam veteran, Duke University undergrad, UCLA MBA--has become one of the nation's most trusted asset managers.

A Delaware court gave final approval to a previously announced settlement of a shareholder lawsuit against Pimco Advisors LP, a Newport Beach asset manager, the firm said Friday. The settlement calls for Pimco to pay $15.4 million to shareholders of New York-based Oppenheimer Capital LP, which Pimco acquired last year for $1.1 billion.

A Connecticut money manager owned by Pimco Advisors LP is closing its $1.2-billion fixed-income management business to focus on overseeing $11.2 billion in equities. Columbus Circle in Stamford plans to shut down its bond business over the next few months, said Christopher Burnham, the Connecticut company's chief executive. "I considered managing fixed income a diversion from what we do best," he said.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York plans to get along without the help of bond giant Pimco or Goldman Sachs Group as the central bank continues its massive purchases of mortgage-backed securities. The New York Fed on Monday said it had "streamlined" its 8-month-old, $1.25-trillion program to buy mortgage bonds from four investment managers to two. Saying the changes were "not performance related," the bank said it was retaining Wellington Management Co. and BlackRock Inc. Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co. and Goldman Sachs Asset Management will exit.

Star money manager Mohamed A. El-Erian is returning to Newport Beach-based investment giant Pimco in a move that puts him in line to take the helm of the company. El-Erian, who left Pimco less than two years ago to run Harvard University's endowment fund, is coming back to the firm in the newly created post of co-chief executive and co-chief investment officer, Pimco said Tuesday.

Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund at Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co., has pared his Treasury holdings to the lowest level in six months. Gross and a growing number of investors are reducing Treasury bonds in favor of mortgage-backed securities as expectations for lower interest rates this year fade.

Stephen Treadway, the former chief executive of Pimco Advisors Distributors, agreed to pay $572,000 to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he engaged in mutual fund market timing. Treadway, 59, also agreed to a one-year ban on serving as an officer or director of an investment company, the SEC said Thursday. A federal jury found Treadway guilty of fraud, breaching fiduciary duty and other violations of securities laws in June.

A federal jury in New York on Friday found that the former head of Pimco stock funds violated securities laws, handing the Securities and Exchange Commission a major victory in its pursuit of mutual-fund trading abuses. The civil verdict came against Stephen Treadway, the former chief executive of Pimco Advisors Distributors, who had been accused by the SEC of helping a hedge fund improperly trade mutual-fund shares.

A former Pimco executive betrayed investors and violated securities laws when he approved a secret deal with a hedge fund that put its interest ahead of mutual fund investors, a government lawyer said at the start of a civil fraud trial Monday in New York. In May 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Stephen Treadway, who at the time headed Pimco Advisors Distributors, which sells Pimco mutual funds.

Pimco's new "Main Street indexing" stock mutual funds may take a bit of work for Main Street investors to grasp. The funds won't actually own the 1,000 individual stocks in the index developed by Robert Arnott at Research Affiliates. Instead, they will own the shares via "swap" agreements with other institutions, said Brent Harris, the chairman of Newport Beach-based Pimco Funds. The institutions will pay the funds whatever return the index earns, if any.

Ending a second government probe into its business, the Pimco mutual fund group agreed Wednesday to pay $20.6 million to resolve federal and state allegations that it failed to properly disclose payments made to brokerage firms that sold its funds. The Pimco deal marked the first mutual fund enforcement action brought by California regulators under a state anti-fraud law that took effect this year. Other fund giants also are being targeted by Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer under the law.