PIMCO Co-founder Bill Gross Jumps to Janus

Janus Capital Group Inc. has announced that legendary fixed-income manager William H. Gross will be joining Janus Capital Group, where he will manage a recently launched Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and related strategies.

According to a news release announcing the move, he will join Myron Scholes, Ph.D., and other members of the Janus team focused on global asset allocation. Gross starts Monday, Sept. 29, 2014 and will begin managing the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and related strategies effective Oct. 6, 2014. “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 organization,” Gross said in the news release. 

Gross will be based in a new Janus office to be established in Newport Beach, CA (where PIMCO is located) and will be responsible for building out the firm’s efforts in global macro fixed income strategies. The announcement says that 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.” 

“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 organization,” said 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.”

Gross co-founded PIMCO in 1971 and had run the world's largest bond fund there, while overseeing more than $1.9 trillion in securities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The announcement comes as the SEC is investigating whether PIMCO artificially increased returns of the PIMCO Total Return exchange-traded fund managed by Gross.