Pimco’s Bill Gross gave a gracious nod to Vanguard in his latest monthly post, acknowledging the competitor, which has surpassed his signature Total Return Fund for the title of world’s biggest mutual fund. A seven-month streak of asset outflows has taken Total Return Fund down to about $248 billion—$40 billion or so below Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund. Gross gave “high praise” to Vanguard in his Investment Outlook writeup and said there’s “actually a place for both of our firms and investment philosophies,” pointing to Pimco’s active fund-management approach versus Vanguard’s index-driven models. He didn’t check his competitive drive at the door, though, finishing with a mention of Pimco’s “alpha” and affirming its “aim of outperforming Vanguard, as well as many other active managers” … Kudos to the Irvine Company’s PR team, which wasted no time positioning the company’s Hotel Irvine—the former Hyatt Regency Irvine—firmly among the “finer” properties in Southern California. That’s how newly hired GM J.D. Shafer put it in a recent L.A. Times story about the steps high-end hotels throughout the region are taking to woo the increasing numbers of increasingly well-heeled visitors from China. Hotel Irvine plans to carry Chinese-language newspapers and offer familiar fare on menus. Our Kari Hamanaka reports that the establishment is eyeing leisure travelers of all sorts as part of a bid to build on its long-standing base of business travelers, a trend that’s also been taken up by other hotels in the city (see story, right) … Hamanaka also reports that Chinese visitors from Taiwan will soon be able to get a taste of home at South Coast Plaza, which is expected to get a Din Tai Fung dumpling house next year. The Taipei-based eatery is another example of a trend that has seen local shopping centers add more food and entertainment to their tenant bases, moves that helped the biggest here notch another year of impressive sales gains (see story, page 1; list, page 14) … The trend is clearly on display at Fashion Island, which saw upscale Mexican specialist RED O open last month and is on double time to get next-door neighbor Fig & Olive up and running by year’s end. A recent visit found a showroom’s load of furnishings being delivered to Fig & Olive, where workers are busy with what look to be finishing touches … It’s not all joints with tablecloths and real silverware for the Insider. Recently overheard a table full of 20- or 30-somethings talking about bitcoin over lunch at the Palm Cafe Food Court on Michelson just off Von Karman. Checked in to find out they were all college educated and working in real estate. None had a full grip on what bitcoins are all about—join the club—but their choice of the virtual currency as a subject for lunch talk told me it’s making headway in the common consciousness for more than its bubble-like price lately … Got back to the office and found out that Newport Lamborghini struck a deal to sell a Tesla and take payment in bitcoins (see more details in Addendum, page 20).
