The "most important thing that a mutual fund manager needs to focus on," in the eyes of an investment chief at a $1.84-trillion-AUM fund firm, is liquidity management.

Daniel John Ivascyn Pimco Group Chief Investment Officer

Dan Ivascyn, group chief investment officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pimco [profile], shares that tidbit and more in an interview with Morningstar's Christine Benz and Jeff Ptak on The Long View podcast.

"If you do that well in an absolute and certainly a relative sense, clients are going to reward you with more business over time," Ivascyn says. "One key way to differentiate ourselves as an active asset manager over time is strong liquidity management."

Ivascyn elaborates further on liquidity management and a host of other subjects, including Pimco's office layout:

Some of this, we have to credit Bill Gross, who launched this firm many years ago — one thing that's a little bit different is that portfolio managers at PIMCO, regardless of seniority or location, don't sit in offices. Every portfolio manager, including myself and other members of the leadership team, sit out on the trading floor 95% of the time. In fact, I don't even have my own office. I have an office I use, it's empty, and it's an office that other people can go in and use when it's open as well.

"So, that's something that's been in existence at PIMCO since the very beginning," Ivascyn adds. "It's how things started during my first days in the office back in 1998." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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