JANUS CAPITAL GROUP INC The mutual-fund tracker also said the BlackRock Strategic Income Opportunities fund saw more than $1 billion of inflows for the same time period while the DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund had $1.35 billion of inflows, Morningstar data said.
Gross, one of the bond market's most renowned investors, quit Pimco for distant rival Janus Capital Group Inc (>> Janus Capital Group Inc) on Sept. 26. He was expected to be fired the next day from the firm he helped found more than 40 years ago.
Eric Jacobson, senior analyst at Morningstar, said he believes the MetWest Total Return Bond Fund, which is owned by TCW, is attracting inflows because its strategy "has long been on the list of potential options for many consultants and institutions that also use Pimco, or are in some cases managers with whom they've invested in addition to investing with Pimco."
TCW, which is overseen by Tad Rivelle, chief investment officer of fixed-income, ranks in the top 25 fund families and has attracted the strongest net inflows so far this year, with Vanguard at No. 1 with net inflows of $86.5 billion, according to Morningstar data. Rivelle had worked for Gross at Pimco.
Jacobson said decisions to move out of Pimco would, in some cases, naturally drive consultants and investors to the next firm or firms on their list, "which might help explain the size and speed of the inflows to MetWest in such a short span.
"Ironically, I think a lot of that owes to the groundwork they began laying years ago to get on so many firms' radars even though they were still pretty small," Jacobson said.
"They gained credibility as an institutional shop with a Pimco lineage a long, long time ago. To the degree that some of their growth might have been slowed over the years by Pimco's ascent, this may be, in some small part anyway, be a bit of a payoff for their patience."
(Reporting By Jennifer Ablan; Editing by David Gregorio, Bernard Orr)
By Jennifer Ablan
