The Pimco Funds Global Investors Series Income Fund launched on 30 November and is managed by Daniel Ivascyn and Alfred Murata. Ivascyn runs the US mutual version of the portfolio.
Domiciled in Dublin, the fund has been authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Global Investors Series umbrella and is recognised by the FSA.
The Ucits fund will follow the same investment objective as Ivascyn’s US-domiciled product, which is to maximise current income with long-term capital appreciation being a secondary aim.
In order to achieve this, the fund invests in a broad range of fixed-income securities with an average duration of between two and eight years. Ivascyn and Murata will use a global multi-sector strategy with both top-down and bottom-up inputs.
Ivascyn’s current strategy for US fund focuses on the income and price appreciation that the revival of the US housing market is creating in senior non-agency mortgage securities (MBS). Some 54% of the fund’s duration comes from securities linked to mortgages, with 26% being held in non-agency MBS – the portfolio’s largest individual sector play.
The US fund, which was launched in March 2007, returned 17.59% between the start of 2012 and the end of September, its most recent factsheet shows. This outperforms the 3.99% rise in the Barclays US Aggregate Index benchmark.
It is up 19.06% over one year to 30 September against the benchmark’s 5.16%, up 16.01% against 6.19% over three years and up 11.80% against 6.53% over five years. Since inception the fund has returned 11.12%, outperforming the benchmark’s 6.36%.