Withdrawals continued at Pimco's total return fund in April, the Allianz-owned fund manager said. Estimated at $5.6bn, they left the fund with $110.4bn of assets at the end of the month.
This has resulted in the Pimco fund losing its mantle as the world's biggest mutual bond fund, since the Vanguard total bond market index fund had $117.3bn as of 30 April, according to Reuters quoting a Vanguard spokesman.
At its peak in April 2013, the Pimco total return fund had $292.9bn in assets under management.
Pimco pointed out that, year-to-date to the end of April, the fund delivered a net after-fee return of 1.62%, outperforming its benchmark by 38 basis points and generating excess returns of 30 basis points above the Morningstar intermediate term bond average.
Bill Gross, who launched the Pimco fund, left the firm suddenly last September for the smaller Janus Capital (see IAR, 29 September 2014).
Last week it was announced that Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was to become a senior advisor to Pimco (see IAR, 30 April).