What Worah's Departure Means for PIMCO's Funds

PIMCO filed prospectus updates on Dec. 11, 2019, reflecting plans for CIO of asset allocation and real return Mihir Worah to retire at the end of March 2020, remaining an advisor to the firm through the end of 2020.

Given his role, Worah’s departure will affect a broad range of strategies, including several for which he isn’t listed as a portfolio manager but has had oversight of the managers. Those include areas such as inflation-linked bonds, commodities, and various quantitative, asset-allocation, and target-date offerings.

Worah does comanage several funds, and his share of responsibility for each will either be absorbed by existing comanagers or transferred to newly appointed comanagers by the end of 2019. In the United States they include PIMCO Real Return PRRIX, PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy PCRIX, PIMCO Total Return PTTRX, and the PIMCO-subadvised Harbor Bond HABDX.

In the case of PIMCO Real Return, Daniel He is being appointed comanager to Steve Rodosky, a veteran PIMCO leader who joined that fund in January 2019 in anticipation of the departure of then lead manager Jeremie Banet.

The real return and commodities portfolios remain in capable hands. Rodosky has a long history running PIMCO’s long-duration strategies and is an experienced U.S. government rates trader who led the firm’s U.S. Treasury trading desk from 2007 to 2016, as well. Rodosky took over a mix of roles after a brief leave back then, including leadership responsibilities across teams and the firm. He also took over as head of PIMCO’s U.S. inflation-linked desk in early 2019. As a senior leader on the global fixed-income team, Lorenzo Pagani heads the firms’ European rates managers and has managed European and global bond portfolios for several years. Nic Johnson has overseen the day-to-day management of the firm’s commodities portfolios for several years and has been instrumental in improving the broader investment team’s portfolio construction analytics, among other contributions.

In the case of PIMCO Total Return and Harbor Bond, firm veteran Mohit Mittal will be joining incumbents Scott Mather and Mark Kiesel as a comanager. Mittal’s responsibilities have expanded considerably since he joined PIMCO in 2007 as a rates and derivatives specialist; senior leaders have often dubbed him a rising star at the firm. In addition to managing a wide range of portfolios--including investment-grade corporate debt (he’s been a comanager on PIMCO Investment Grade Credit PIGIX since 2016), long duration, and unconstrained bond--Mittal’s oversight of the firm’s corporate bond traders has broadened over the past several years from U.S. investment-grade to emerging-markets corporates and U.S. high-yield.

We will continue to review the potential impacts of Worah’s retirement on PIMCO’s strategies, but for now we don’t anticipate changing any of the affected funds’ Morningstar Analyst Ratings as a result.