Just five months after expanding its London-based equities team, Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco) is closing down three active stock mutual funds and will instead focus on enhanced indexed strategies.
The decision has led to the resignation of Virginie Maisonneuve, chief investment officer for equities, who will leave next month.
Maisonneuve joined Pimco as recently as January 2014 from Schroders, where she was head of global and international equities, and the equities team was expanded in December 2014.
Her departure is the biggest setback yet to a plan, announced in 2009 under former investment chiefs Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian, to transform Pimco, owned by German insurer Allianz, from a bond shop to a diversified money manager.
Her departure is also the most noteworthy since Gross himself left the firm in September 2014 (IAR, 29 September 2014, Ivascyn replaces Gross as Pimco's group CIO).
The funds that are closing are the emerging multi-asset fund, the EqS Emerging Markets fund and the EqS Pathfinder fund, according to filings made by Pimco with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The three funds being liquidated have gathered less than $1bn in assets since the first of them started more than five years ago, and the staff who worked on them will leave as part of shake-up.
Pimco CEO Douglas Hodge said "equities will continue to be an important part of Pimco's investment solutions." He said Maisonneuve, who ran Pimco's strategy of actively managed stocks, will oversee an orderly liquidation of the strategies." But "in light of these changes she has decided to leave the firm." Pimco apparently has no plans to replace her.
Maisonneuve is one of 10 females among the 66 Pimco managing directors, but the only one on the firm's 12-person global executive leadership team.
Assets in Pimco's equity strategies, including enhanced indexes, amount to about $50bn, a relatively minor portion of the fixed-income leader's total assets under management of $1.6trn.
In the insurance investment field, Pimco manages close to $100bn in third-party assets.
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