Pimco: Totally Returned

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

After an annus horribilis that Bill Gross, Pacific Investment Management’s star manager, called a “stinker,” Pimco’s flagship Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest, has swelled to a record $259 billion, the company reported on May 2. According to Bloomberg, Gross’s mega-fund attracted $2.7 billion of investor deposits in April and has returned 4.4 percent this year, beating 98 percent of its peers. Size be damned: The yoga devotee has steered Total Return to a five-year performance of 8.66 percent per year, which was in the 98th percentile of its peer group.

For a fund supertanker of that size to deliver such steady returns is pretty much unheard of. Pimco now has sovereign-like clout, sporting $1.77 trillion in assets under management, up from just $12 million when it was founded in 1971.

A great moment for Fannie and Freddie's bailout booster Bill Gross.