Legendary Bond-Fund Manager Dan Fuss To Step Away

Loomis Sayles bond-fund legend Dan Fuss will step away from his portfolio management duties on March 1, 2021, the firm has announced. That date will coincide with his 45th anniversary at the firm.

Fuss, who received Morningstar's Outstanding Portfolio Manager award in 2019 and was the Morningstar Fixed-Income Manager of the Year in 2009, is a named portfolio manager on nine mutual funds. Of those, Morningstar rates the firm's flagship Loomis Sayles Bond LSBDX, Loomis Sayles Strategic Income NEFZX, Loomis Sayles Multisector Income, Loomis Sayles High Income Opportunities LSIOX, and Loomis Sayles Global Allocation LSWWX. As of March 2021, Fuss will serve as a special advisor to the Loomis Sayles Full Discretion team that manages these strategies and oversaw $65 billion as of September 2020. He will also remain on the firm's board of directors and retain his executive vice president duties.

Fuss' transition after a long and illustrious career is not a surprise, but it is certainly a loss for the Full Discretion team given that he pioneered the benchmark-agnostic and multisector approach it has applied across its strategies for decades. That said, the team's transition planning has been thoughtful and in motion for more than a decade. Over the years, Fuss slowly shifted his responsibilities to his comanagers but continued to make broad portfolio positioning and strategic decisions.

Longtime deputies Elaine Stokes, Matthew Eagan, Brian Kennedy, and Todd Vandam will continue to serve as portfolio managers on the aforementioned strategies. The group is skilled and will invest with the same approach that has served investors well over the years. The managers effectively work with the firm's large and seasoned team of dedicated strategists and traders, as well as its deep credit research corps that's among the largest in the industry.

As a result, the People ratings and Morningstar Analyst Ratings across the five strategies remain unchanged.