Newport Beach’s Pacific Investment Management Co. is making a hiring push as it diversifies into stock funds and preps for a new headquarters in Newport Center.
The mutual fund manager, best known for investing in bonds, expects to add about 300 people around the globe this year.
The hiring stands to mark Pimco’s second-straight year of sizable employment growth and would bring its total to nearly 1,800 employees.
“Pimco hired 300 in 2010 and plans to hire the same amount globally again in 2011,” spokesman Mark Porterfield said.
About 850 of Pimco’s employees are here, with most at its headquarters in Newport Center that oversees about $1.2 trillion in investments for pension funds, insurers, corporations and others.
Earlier this month, Pimco announced the addition of key executives, analysts and traders in New York, London and Singapore for its stock funds.
Pimco is opening a brokerage in New York as it takes over the selling of its mutual funds from German parent Allianz SE. It’s expected to take on 170 employees from parent Allianz in the move.
Finding people who fit Pimco’s culture is a big part of the hiring process, according to Neel Kashkari, who was handpicked by Pimco cofounder Bill Gross and Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian in late 2009 to head new investment initiatives.
Pimco doesn’t plan to build a wall between its bond and stock funds, according to Kashkari.
“We’re doing the opposite,” he said in an earlier Business Journal interview. “There needs to be a good cultural fit.”
Potential new hires go through the gauntlet before getting an offer.
Some Pimco job seekers must pass 20 interviews and background checks that would make the FBI take note.
Pimco veterans call it the “brain scan.”
• Business: mutual fund manager
• Investments managed: $1.2 trillion
• Headquarters: Newport Beach
• Employees: 1,485; 800 locally
• Notable: looking to hire 300 globally this year
New Headquarters
The hiring comes as Pimco gets ready for a new headquarters.
The Business Journal reported last week that Pimco has struck a letter of intent with Newport Beach-based developer and landlord Irvine Company to have a 380,000-square-foot headquarters built near the Island Hotel Newport Beach.
The proposed building at 650 Newport Center Drive is set to go up a few blocks from Pimco’s existing headquarters, which it leases from Irvine Co.
Construction of the 20-story tower is expected to finish by mid-2013.
The moves come as Pimco steers away from bonds into stocks. The strategy has been taken by many observers as an indication that Gross and El-Erian believe the bond rally of the past 30 years has run its course.
In possibly the strongest signal yet, Gross recently sold all U.S. bonds from his $234 billion Pimco Total Return fund, the world’s largest mutual fund.
Investors have pulled some $19 billion, or 7.4%, from the fund since November, according to data from Chicago-based fund tracker Morningstar Inc.
Planned Move
Pimco planned to debut stock funds before the financial crisis and recession gripped the markets, according to Kashkari.
“It’s a long-term strategic move by our firm and our clients,” he said.
The company has been diversifying for decades.
Pimco began as a government bond manager, then expanded to corporate bonds, currencies, commodities and, later, funds that mimic stock market indexes.
Pimco started its first stock fund, the Pathfinder, in April. It now has $1.8 billion in investments.
Pathfinder is what’s known as a global deep value fund, where managers scour the world looking for what they deem to be good values on stocks.
Pimco plans to debut its second stock fund, with a focus on emerging markets, in coming months.
More are expected in coming years.
