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| Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian is the world's biggest buyer of emerging market debt |
MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, the chief emerging-market bond investor at Pimco in California, likes to tell the story of a trip to Asia at the beginning of 2002. A large investor there was dipping its toes into El-Erian's market. Brazil was doing what it tries to do every January - issuing a 10-year bond. The Asian investor put in an order, received an allocation, and watched as the new bond immediately fell off a cliff, dropping three points in one day.
The fund manager reported this development red-facedly to his superior, the shell-shocked company sold the bond taking a large hit, and an important investor was lost to the asset class for the foreseeable future.
El-Erian was furious: this kind of deal gave emerging-market debt a bad name and kept large numbers of investors on the sidelines. The asset class has...
