Doug Hodge and his team just reversed a 31-month trend, even as they continue to fend off rumors of layoffs.

Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal all report that in December 2015 Pimco's [profile] flagship Total Return Fund bought in $1.3 billion, its first net inflows since April 2013. AUM in the fund stood at $89.9 billion on December 31, 2015, down from a peak of $293 billion two and a half years ago when it was the largest mutual fund in the world.

Douglas M. Hodge PIMCO Chief Executive Officer

The publications note that reinvested capital gains and dividends played a big part in the reversal. Indeed, Bloomberg and the FT report that, without those reinvestments, the fund would've had net outflows for the month. Yet it's still a big drop from peak monthly outflows of $27.5 billion in October 2014, the month after Pimco co-founder Bill Gross famously jumped ship.

Yet some Pimco-watchers still worry about the possibility of layoffs. On the other side of the Atlantic, Laura Suter of Money Marketing reports that the pension consultants at NEPC are warning clients about an anticipated "scaling back of non-investment professionals" at Pimco.

"Pimco has already slowed their hiring rate to allow natural attrition to rescale their business model," NEPC reportedly said in a meeting for a pension fund.

Pimco reportedly told the publication that its natural attrition rate is 10 percent and declined to comment beyond that. Similar layoff rumors hit TV news in September 2015. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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