Macaskill on markets: Corporate bond buyers loom larger

If Pimco did manage to score a $375 million profit by securing an allocation of $8 billion of the Verizon $49 billion bond that delivered roughly $2.5 billion of paper gains to investors after it was launched last September, then it was a rare bright spot in a tough year for Mark Kiesel, global head of corporate bonds at the fund management firm.

Pimco’s specialist investment-grade corporate bond fund managed to slightly outperform its benchmark – the Barclays US credit index – in losing 1.69% for 2013, when the index was down by 2.01%. But the fund also shed almost half of its assets under management, with a fall from $10.2 billion to $5.6 billion, and there have been further minor outflows this year, despite a relatively solid return of just over 4% for the year to late April.

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