Debbie Yow hasn’t been on the job long, but she’s already making her presence felt as N.C. State’s athletics director.
“We are doing a reorganization,” Yow said in a phone interview Monday afternoon.
Yow, who took the helm of the Wolfpack athletic department in July, already has promoted department veteran David Horning to executive senior associate AD, making him the clear No. 2 administrator in the department. She also is looking to hire at least one, and possibly two, new senior associate ADs.
Additionally, Yow is shifting around some duties and responsibilities. The process will be complete in a couple of weeks, she says, and then the changes will be reviewed again a year from now.
Yow, who previously served as AD at the University of Maryland, says that she doesn’t intend to fire any employees as part of the reorganization and hasn’t heard of any employees that are leaving voluntarily.
Yow replaced Lee Fowler as AD. Fowler stepped down from the post after a decade as AD.
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A Sacramento County Superior Court judge denied the governor’s request to order State Controller John Chiang to pay many state employees the federal minimum wage, the latest in a two-year standoff.
Judge Patrick Marlette’s decision is the latest battle between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chiang, whose office issues paychecks to 240,000-plus state workers.
About 200,000 faced earning $7.25 per hour — or $290 per week — since their bargaining units had not reached a deal with the governor last month.
The governor took the action in order to preserve cash as he and state lawmakers attempt to address a $19.1 billion shortfall for this current fiscal year. The cash-strapped state is looking at aggressive cost-cutting efforts to control spending, including possibly curbing payroll and programs statewide.
Friday furloughs ended last month, but the governor soon announced the federal minimum wage proposal in order to preserve cash.
But Chiang, a Democrat, said he would not follow the governor’s order unless the court demanded no fax pay day loan. The state 3rd District Court of Appeal found in favor of Schwarzenegger’s order, but Marlette’s ruling Friday delays the issue until July 26, with a full hearing next month.
So, state employees will likely receive their full paychecks, since checks are processed starting July 22.
State employees, many of whom lost about 15 percent of their pay with the three-day-per-month furloughs, would have been paid the federal minimum wage until a budget was passed, and then receive retroactive pay for the remainder of their salary.
Chiang has argued that the state’s computer system could not handle the minimum-wage request, and dramatically lowering pay for state employees could create legal problems for California.
After a grueling 20-hour session, lawmakers early Friday finished melding the House and Senate Wall Street reform bills, bringing Congress closer to passing the most sweeping changes to the financial system since the New Deal.
Finishing at 5:39 a.m. ET, 43 lawmakers agreed to send to their respective chambers a final bill that aims to strengthen consumer protection, shine a light on complex financial products, create a new process for taking down giant, failing financial firms, and make them stronger to prevent such failure.
"We are now on the brink of passing Wall Street reform," said President Obama at the White House, shortly before leaving for Canada to attend the G-20 meeting. "We are poised to pass the toughest financial reforms since the ones we passed during the Great Depression."
The conference committee votes were 20-11 among House negotiators and 7-5 among Senate negotiators, strictly along party lines. The room erupted into claps and hugs when it was all done, with staffers shaking hands and saying, "big bill."
In one of their final votes, lawmakers renamed the legislation the Dodd-Frank Bill for the lawmakers who led the work on the reforms: Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass. The chamber erupted in cheers on the motion’s approval.
"It’s the most extraordinary experience," Frank said. "You hate to have the kind of pain that so many people went through in this economic crisis, but it just doubled our resolve to get it done."
Frank and Dodd insisted on pushing forward and wrapping up the negotiations, to ready the bill for final passage by each chamber before Congress adjourns for the Independence Day recess.
Shortly after the vote, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put out a statement supporting the efforts and calling for Congress to move ahead. "We urge Congress to carry the momentum forward and move swiftly towards final passage," he said.
The move was a big win for the White House, giving Obama fodder as he encourages other nations to embrace financial reforms at the G-20 meeting in Toronto on Saturday.
"This will strengthen the hand of the president going to Toronto to make that case," Dodd said. "We can make the case if not to embrace exactly what we’ve done, to embrace the principles we’ve enshrined in this bill."
Despite promises of an open negotiating process, many of the toughest deals were reached in private conversations among Democrats, as well as White House and Treasury officials, outside the Senate meeting room session that was being broadcast on C-SPAN.
Lawmakers, who began negotiations Thursday at 9:30 a.m. ET, grew increasingly short-tempered and weary. Sometimes, the air conditioning shut off, and suit jackets and sweaters came off and sweat ran down faces.
The lawmakers have been meeting for two weeks reconciling the bills, which were largely similar. However, they left most of the toughest decisions to the last day.
Most of Thursday, negotiations were slow going, as Democrats disagreed among themselves on measures that aimed to stop the kinds of problems that lead to the massive taxpayer bailout of American International Group.
Early Friday, lawmakers agreed to a weakened version of a provision originally authored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., to force large banks to spin off divisions that trade derivatives contracts into affiliates.
The compromise allows banks to engage in trades of contracts of traditional banking bets, such as on interest rates and the price of gold. But banks would have to two years to spin off affiliates if they want to make riskier trades, ranging from commodities to credit default swaps.
But Lincoln fought efforts to weaken the provision further Friday morning.
"Clearly swap dealing is a risky activity, and it’s something we need to deal with," Lincoln said. "Banks should be banks."
Finish line
Congress first started working on financial overhaul last spring. The House passed a version in December, and the Senate passed its version in May.
Since January 2009, financial services firms have spent nearly $600 million and hired hundreds of lobbyists to influence legislation including financial reform, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This week, dozens of them lined the Senate office building meeting room and hallway, where they often pulled staffers and lawmakers aside.
The final compromise that lawmakers struck will establish a consumer financial protection regulatory bureau inside the Federal Reserve, that will write new rules to protect consumers from unfair or abusive mortgages and credit cards. Lawmakers agreed the regulator would not oversee auto dealers who make auto loans.
The final deal will also create a 10-member council of regulators, headed by the Treasury Secretary. The group is tasked with sounding an alarm before companies are in position to trigger a financial crisis.
Regulators will be tasked with ensuring banks beef up their capital cushions, such as forcing financial firms to move more of their assets into investments that are more easily converted into cash over the next several years.
The bill would also establish new procedures for shutting down giant financial firms that are collapsing.
The bill aims to shine a brighter light on some of the different kinds of complex financial products, called derivatives, that are blamed for the problems that forced a bailout of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It would force most derivatives on to clearinghouses and exchanges, to help pinpoint the value of the trades.
Republicans objected to some of the bill’s major provisions, particularly parts that establish the consumer agency and create new rules for the derivatives. While they generally favored more consumer protection and more regulation of derivatives, they argued that the legislation is too heavy-handed in these areas.
Late night calls
Derivatives: After midnight, lawmakers began discussing differences on the bills that aim to shine a light on derivatives.
Lawmakers agreed to push many derivatives onto clearinghouses and exchanges that can better pinpoint the value of the securities and create firewall’s between buyers and sellers.
They also agreed to allow leeway for financial firms to avoid exchanges and avoid posting collateral on such contracts for so-called commercial end-users, such as airlines that are trying to hedge against the changing price of jet fuel.
Additionally, lawmakers embraced a provision that prevents big banks from making risky bets on "nontraditional" derivatives and having access to emergency taxpayer-backed loans. Banks would have to spin off their swaps desk into affiliates, if they want to make such bets.
Volcker: Just before midnight, lawmakers agreed on a new version of the so-called Volcker Rule, which was first proposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The measure prevents banks from owning hedge funds and trading for their own accounts.
Lawmakers agreed to gives regulators more specifics and less leeway when it comes to preventing banks from trading for themselves or owning hedge funds. But they also watered it down in several ways: It doesn’t impact insurers. And it allows some proprietary trading in areas, such as government debt, for hedging purposes and small business investments.
As for the ban on banks owning hedge funds, the provision allows Wall Street banks that take commercial deposits to sink as much as 3% of capital in hedge funds or private equity.
Consumer groups and policy analysts watching the negotiations noted that 3% of a giant Wall Street bank’s capital means billions could still be invested on risky bets.
"Three percent of Goldman Sachs’ capital is a big number, and it enables very large funds," said Raj Date, executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy.
Also, for some banks, the provision may not fully go into effect for up to seven years, according to Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Concept Capital’s Washington Research Group.
Bank tax: The cost of implementing Wall Street reform bills is around $19 billion and Congress decided to pay for it by taxing the largest financial firms, with firms taking the biggest risks paying the most.
Austin area deal volume and venture capital funding during the first quarter increased slightly compared with the same period last year, but the median capital raised per deal continued to decline.
Fourteen local venture-backed companies completed financings during the quarter versus nine companies during the same period last year. Also, the total amount that was raised surged from $42 million during the first quarter 2009 to $43 million in the first quarter this year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
However, the median amount raised by local companies declined to $3 million during the quarter compared with $4 million during the same three-month period last year and $6 million during all of 2008. Local financings included $7.7 million for WhiteGlove Technologies Inc., $6.2 million for Javelin Semiconductor Inc., and $1.4 million for 7 Billion People, Dow Jones reported.
Austin financings during the quarter stood in contrast to the national trend that showed the volume of deals increased along with the median amount per round.
U.S. companies received $4.7 billion in 597 deals during the first quarter, up 12 percent from the $4.2 billion invested in 522 deals during the same period last year. The median deal amount surged from $5 million during the first quarter 2009 to $8.8 million during the same period this year, according to Dow Jones.
“The uptick in venture investments during the first quarter of 2010 shows the industry is moving toward a slow recovery following the economic downturn,” said Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource.
“As the liquidity and fundraising environments thaw, investors have more capital on hand but continue to deploy it cautiously.”
New Orleans-based Advantage Capital Partners was tied with Austin Ventures as the first quarter’s most active investor in local companies with two apiece, Dow Jones reported.
PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that Austin-area companies raised $71.1 million in venture capital during the first quarter versus $20.5 million during the same period last year.
In a little less than a month's time, upscale fashion retailer and tailor Larrimor's has settled in to its new Downtown location, a few blocks away from the space it called home for almost 70 years.
"This is a much better space," Larrimor President Tom Michael said Friday during a tour of the new store. He's married to Lisa Michael, the third-generation of family ownership for Larrimor's.
"Our retailer friends who come in here say the light is just incredible," Lisa Michael said. "We worked hard to maintain visibility and let the natural light flow through."
The store was in the Union Trust Building for some seven decades, and moved March 1 into One PNC Plaza at the corner of Wood Street and Fifth Avenue. The site is a former PNC branch that relocated to Three PNC Plaza, the new 23-story office, hotel and condo building around the corner.
Larrimor's was started by Lisa Michael's grandfather, Harry Slesinger, in 1939. Her father, Carl, succeeded him, and she proudly shows off catalog photos from years past, with her father as a model.
"My mother got to pick the female models who appeared with him," she said.
The store was in the middle of three trunk shows Friday, as well as the open house it is holding through March 27, to welcome longtime and new customers to the new location.
From designers like Burberry, Nat Nast and Hugo Boss on the menswear side, to Nina McLemore and Ciniza Rocca in women's clothing, Larrimor's has kept the lines customers got to know at its previous Downtown store, as well as its store in Mt fast payday loan. Lebanon at the Galleria. Milliner Jennifer Copeland and jewelry designer Carol Lipworth were on hand Friday as well to show off their custom, handmade pieces.
"When people come in here, they're really wowed," Tom Michael said of the new space.
The long, glass-walled store doesn't feel much like the bank that once occupied the space, save for a cylindrical elevator shaft that the Michaels redesigned as a functional display area.
The store retains its traditional tailoring services, with men's suits that are "made to measure." As always, customers can specialize items like pockets sizes and styles, jacket linings, and other features.
"We want people to leave here and look great, and feel like they look great," Tom Michael said.
For her part, Lisa Michael wants new visitors to Larrimor's to realize that, while many items are indeed high-ticket, the store has something for everyone. Many of the women's clothing items, for instance, are designed to be "day-to-dinner" wear that can easily transition from the board room to a banquet.
"We've really been pleasantly surprised by how easily we've taken to the new space," Tom Michael said.
Mayer Electric Supply has opened a new office in south Alabama, according to a release issued by the electrical supplier Thursday.
The new location in Calvert will be the 16th in Alabama and the 51st in the Southeast region for the company. It will go by name Mayer-Mobile North.
In a press release, Mayer President Wes Smith said the site is well-positioned to serve the growing Mobile region, which has attracted a number of new industrial companies in the last several years bad credit personal loan lenders.
The new location will be less than a mile from the state’s new ThyssenKrupp plant.
Job hunters may be better off being unemployed and searching for permanent work rather than taking temporary positions, a new study contends.
“It’s not that temp work is bad, per se,” said David Autor, who co-wrote the study. “It’s that people who are successful as temps, would tend to be far more successful in direct hire jobs. It’s the opportunity cost rather than direct harm.”
Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleague Susan Houseman carried out a broad study of outcomes for 37,000 job seekers. The study group comprised clients of Work First, a public job-placement service operating in Detroit whose goal is to get people off welfare.
Applicants were randomly assigned to jobs; some were temporary positions doled out by agencies, others were direct hires to participating companies. All the jobs were relatively low-wage, low-skill labour.
Autor found that those workers who lucked into direct-hire employment, on average, earned 30 to 50 per cent more over the next two years than workers who took temp jobs. They found that earnings for temp workers tended to jump at the outset but then settled back when those jobs ended after a few days or weeks.
“The average outcome is that people placed in temp jobs do less well than they would have if they had just spent the extra time to search for a direct-hire position,” Autor said from his office at M.I.T. on Monday.
“Holding the temp job has two consequences: First of all, it’s very difficult to search for a job while you’re working. Second, when you’re connected to a temp agency, you may have the illusion a job is about to show up. They say, ‘We’ll call you when we have something.’ I wouldn’t call it ‘complacency,’ but it may create the sense that you’re doing something when you’re not payday loans guaranteed no fax.”
At the root of all this is the onerous nature of the job hunt itself.
“We know from all kinds of studies that people … hate searching for work. They hate it much more than working.”
Temp work, it seems, jolts people out of a job-hunting state of mind while offering no long-term benefits.
“Direct-hire placements give people stability. Stability is very valuable,” Autor said. “People often talk about the benefits of flexibility and so forth. Most of those benefits are actually for the employer rather than the employee.”
One of his conclusions is that government should not be in the business of trying to place people in temp jobs.
“You don’t need a government agency to connect you to a temp agency. Everybody knows where they are,” Autor said. “What is hard is connecting workers directly to employers.”
The participants in the study were a very particular kind of worker – one with little training. But Autor believes the study’s findings apply to a broad economic spectrum.
He is very careful not to suggest that people who need to put food on the table should be turning down any sort of job. But he gently suggests that the goal should be a successful job search, not a short one.
“What I’d like (job seekers) to take from this is that although temporary work sometimes leads to a direct-hire position, that’s probably not the most fruitful way to get them, relative to the sort of painful work of a direct-hire search,” Autor said.
“Don’t view temp work as the on-ramp into the labour market.”
Colorado nonprofits expected a tough year in 2009 — and that’s exactly what they got, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Colorado Nonprofit Association and the Community Resource Center.
Of the 450 leaders of Colorado nonprofit organizations surveyed, 48 percent said their organizations expect to fall short of their revenue goals for the year.
Other key survey findings:
• Fifty-six percent of respondents reported an interval over the last 12 months when total expenses exceeded total revenue.
• Sixty-five percent said a major donor reduced or eliminated support due to the economic downturn.
• Sixty-four percent said the economy had a negative impact on obtaining funding from foundations, government agencies and corporations.
The survey — entitled “Weathering the Storm” — is an update of a similar report published earlier this year.
When it became apparent that nonprofits in the state were doing worse than they expected at the beginning of the year, CRC and the Colorado Nonprofit Association invited charities to complete an online questionnaire between Oct. 26 and Nov. 6.
But despite discouraging financial returns, the latest report shows that Colorado nonprofits are taking measures to persevere in during a challenging economic time.
According to the survey, the state’s nonprofits responded to the funding gap by:
• Collaborating with other organizations, with 39 percent sharing expenses and costs payday loan.
• Increasing fundraising activities. Thirty-two percent of nonprofits ramped up face-to-face solicitations, 42 percent requested more foundation grants and 27 percent asked board members to contribute more money.
• Reducing expenses. To respond to the economic downturn, 28 percent of nonprofits surveyed cut back or eliminated programs. Meanwhile, 21 percent cut staff pay or hours and nearly 16 percent laid off staff.
• Using more unpaid volunteers. The survey said 43 percent of nonprofits are already using more volunteers and nearly 40 percent are considering such action.
Looking ahead over the next three years, many Colorado nonprofit leaders say they are re-examining their services and existing programs.
Roughly one-third are re-evaluating their assumptions with the possibility of fundamental restructuring. Another 35 percent expect to expand services in key areas (an increase from 26 percent in the first version of the report).
However, most respondents said they expected their nonprofit will “stay in business.” Fewer than 1 percent of respondents anticipated the need to close.
Click here to download the report in PDF format.
Technology has been a driving force in this year’s initial public offerings.
Consider ChangYou.com Ltd., a Chinese online game developer whose stock price jumped 25 percent at its offering day in April on the NASDAQ. It is now up more than 100 percent from its IPO price.
The company recently had the U.S. launch of its Dragon Oath martial-arts online game, a hit in Asia for the past three years. It has three more online games scheduled for release here and is opening a subsidiary in Santa Clara, Calif.
Among the 16 other tech IPOs in 2009, price gains of better than 30 percent since their offering have been produced by SolarWinds Inc., a management and monitoring software firm; A123Systems Inc., a manufacturer of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries; and Opentable Inc., an online reservation site.
In a year of other IPO gains by familiar names such as Hyatt Hotels and Vitamin Shoppe, the average first-day IPO price "pop" has been 7 percent, and the average overall return 10 percent, according to RenaissanceCapital.com.
But don’t get the impression we’ve returned to the wild-and-crazy IPO markets of the past. Some planned IPOs haven’t even hatched and others have quickly laid an egg because investor caution rules the roost.
"Demand for IPO money continues to run off the scale, as the need for companies to access the capital markets increases," observed David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com in Millburn, N.J. "However, the tug of war is between the comfort level of potential investors and the need for capital for these companies."
Investors are wary of debt-laden companies put on the IPO block by private-equity firms. An example is the Dole Food Co. IPO that was priced at the low end of its expected range, closed lower on its offering day in October and has since declined.
Rather than focus on one market sector, an investor should examine each IPO carefully to see if it makes sense, Menlow advised. Years ago, investors couldn’t care less what an IPO did because they just wanted in on the deal, resulting in "a lot of dogs with fleas" among those IPOs, he said.
"We’re in the last stage of a double-dip recession and starting to see some rays of sunshine in the IPO market," said Linda Killian, portfolio manager of IPO Plus Aftermarket Fund in Greenwich, Conn., up 16 percent over the past 12 months. "The IPOs that have come to market have been priced to sell."
Getting the 2009 IPO market off on the right foot was Mead Johnson Nutrition Co., a quality spin-off from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. whose IPO was priced right, Killian noted. When that success was followed by Rosetta Stone Inc instant payday loan., another viable growth company, other firms were enticed to come to market, too.
IPO Plus Aftermarket Fund, which requires a $5,000 initial investment, buys a portfolio of IPO stocks at the time of the offering and in their subsequent aftermarket trading. The largest of the fund’s 23 holdings were recently Visa Inc., Constant Contact Inc., Athena Health Inc., Mead Johnson and Rackspace Hosting Inc.
"Individual investors can look for good IPOs that have traded down since they were offered," said Killian. "For instance, RailAmerica Inc. is below its IPO price and, although leveraged, is a well-run regional freight railroad operating in 27 states and part of Canada that has fared well in the economic downturn."
Institutional investors still drive the overall IPO market, since only select investors at full-service brokers typically get the opportunity to invest in IPOs. Most average investors invest in IPOs on the secondary market after their initial price pop. IPO Plus Aftermarket Fund is another way of doing that.
"The overall stock market is driving the IPO market, which is playing catch-up," explained John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOScoop.com in Edison, N.J. "The IPO market is a follower, not a leader, and you must have a good stock market in order to get a good IPO market."
Among financial IPOs, Cypress Sharpridge Investments Inc. and Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc. have made gains, pointed out Fitzgibbon, but "the rest are underwater." Some real estate investment trusts also attempted to sweep up toxic assets into IPOs to get rid of them, but those IPOs have stumbled, he said.
"I always keep an eye on the initial IPO filing versus the final filing, since an increase indicates excessive demand and therefore likely good aftermarket performance," he said.
Rue21 Inc., a fast-growing specialty retailer for young women and men whose recent IPO was priced above its expected range and ended its offering day up 28 percent, is "a barn-burner," believes Fitzgibbon. It has had rapid growth and rising profits while displaying ability to predict fads, he said.
He is less enthusiastic about Dollar General Corp., the largest retail-store IPO in more than a dozen years, because it was loaded with debt by Kolberg Kravis Roberts and "pushed out the door as an IPO." But even though that IPO was priced at the low end of its expected range, it has since risen in price based on current investor confidence in discount retailer prospects.
Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said Chinese growth is likely to be hurt by an absence of consumer demand from trading partners such as the U.S.
“The Chinese, I suspect, will have a bubble of their own to confront,” Gross said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday from Pimco’s headquarters in Newport Beach, California. “It’s gearing up for export that doesn’t find an end consumer, that’s the real problem in China.”
The “systemic risk” of new asset bubbles in global economies and markets is rising with the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates at record lows, Gross wrote in his December investment outlook posted on Pimco’s Web site yesterday. Under what Pimco has termed the “new normal,” investors should be prepared for lower-than-average historical returns with heightened government regulation, lower consumption, slower growth and a shrinking global role for the U.S. economy.
“With unemployment in the double digits and likely to stay close to that for the next six months despite job creation ahead, the Fed has nowhere to go,” Gross, co-founder and co- chief investment officer of Pimco, said on Bloomberg Television.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said after a Nov. 16 speech in New York that it’s “not obvious” that asset prices in the U.S. are out of line with underlying values after a 64 percent jump in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index from its March low.
Negative Rates
Treasury three-month bill rates turned negative yesterday for the first time since financial markets froze last year on concern that the rally in higher-yielding assets has outpaced the prospects for economic growth. The two-year note yield touched 0.68 percent, the least since Dec. 19.
The Fed cut its target rate for overnight lending between banks to a range of zero to 0.25 percent in December. Policy makers reiterated on Nov. 4 that they intended to keep the rate at the record low for an extended period.
The “heavy lifting” will likely be done first by other central banks such as those in Australia and Norway that have already begun to increase interest rates, Gross wrote cashadvance.
“China may abandon its dollar peg within six months’ time and with it, its own easy monetary policy that has fostered more significant mini-bubbles of lending and asset appreciation on the Chinese mainland,” he added.
China’s Currency
China has kept its currency at about 6.83 per dollar since July 2008 to help sustain exports amid a global economic slump.
China’s trade surplus in October almost doubled from the previous month, to $24 billion. The nation, with the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves of $2.3 trillion, is the biggest creditor to the U.S., holding $798.9 billion of Treasuries as of September.
“With renewed upward appreciation of the yuan may come potentially volatile global asset price reactions to the downside — higher Treasury yields, and lower stock prices — which the Fed must surely be leery of before making any upward move, of its own,” Gross wrote.
The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year as gross domestic product increased 3.5 percent from July through September after shrinking the previous four quarters, a Commerce Department report showed on Oct. 29.
Gross advised following the lead of billionaire investor Warren Buffett on buying utilities because their earnings growth will mimic U.S. economic growth and provide steady dividend income. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. agreed this month to take over Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., the No. 1 U.S. railroad, for $26 billion.
Fund Returns
The Total Return Fund managed by Gross boosted its investment in Treasuries, so-called agency debt and other government-linked bonds to 48 percent of assets in September from 44 percent in August, according to Pimco’s Web site. The holdings were the most since August 2004.
The $192.56 billion Total Return Fund returned 18.29 percent in the past year, beating 54 percent of its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The one-month return is 1.11 percent, outpacing 59 percent of its competitors. Pimco is a unit of Munich-based insurer Allianz SE.
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