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Russia once again avoided a default on its foreign debt as the Kremlin transferred a $447 million bond payment. The payment was processed by JPMorgan, which is Russia’s foreign correspondent bank. It was then transferred to the admin agent, which in this instance is BNY Mellon, sources familiar with the matter told The Post. JPMorgan got the go-ahead from the Biden administration, which imposed sanctions on the Russian economy following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, before processing the payment, Markets Insider reported. JPMorgan and BNY Mellon both declined to comment when reached by The Post. Holders of Russian bonds...

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Wednesday it is up to the U.S. to decide whether crucial interest payments on two dollar-denominated eurobonds go through, ratcheting up fears of Moscow’s first foreign currency debt default in over a century. “The possibility or impossibility of fulfilling our obligations in foreign currency does not depend on us, we have the money, we paid the payment, now the ball is on the side, first of all, of the American authorities,” Siluanov said in an interview with RT Arabic, according to Russian news agency RIA. “The Russian Federation has the necessary money in foreign...

Pimco is at risk of losing up to $2.6 billion if Russia fails to make its debt payments, after the asset manager bet big against a default, according to a Financial Times report. The investing giant holds $1.5 billion in Russian Federation-linked government bonds, the report said, and it had sold $1.1 billion in credit default swaps, or CDS, on Russian sovereign debt at the start of 2022. That means Pimco is vulnerable to lose out on two fronts — the bond holdings and the CDS — if Russia does default on its sovereign debt, which Fitch Ratings has warned...

The CEO of a $2 trillion investment fund said he made the decision to resign from his post after his young daughter wrote him a note listing 22 milestones he had missed in her life. California-based Mohamed El-Erian left his job as chief executive of PIMCO in mid-March. The 56-year-old El-Erian, who made $100 million in 2011 alone, chose to leave his post after his 10-year-old daughter wrote about all the special moments he was absent for in her life.

Pacific Investment Management Co. suffered roughly $10 billion of withdrawals following the Friday departure of co-founder Bill Gross, a person familiar with the matter said, a sign of how quickly Mr. Gross’s surprise move is reshaping the bond-investing landscape. Pimco is bracing for more outflows on the heels of the veteran investor’s departure after months of internal strife over his leadership. At the same time, some managers say they remain committed to the firm. Some within the Newport Beach, Calif., investment firm are projecting it will lose at least $100 billion or more in assets due to withdrawals, the person...

Bill Gross, who co-founded Pacific Investment Management, or Pimco, in 1971, will leave his own firm to join competitor Janus Capital. Gross served as the firm’s chief investment officer and managed the Pimco Total Return fund — one of the world’s largest bond funds with more than $1.9 trillion in securities, according to the company’s website. The fund has not done well for years, though, and has been plagued by huge outflows. “I look forward to returning my full focus to the fixed income markets and investing, giving up many of the complexities that go with managing a large, complicated...

The Wall Street Journal on February 25th published a story about December’s messy corporate divorce between Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erianas, co-Chief Investment Officers at Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), the world’s largest bond fund with almost $2 trillion in assets.  The article focused on the prickly personality of Gross and foul language complaints by El-Erian during a period of stress last summer when the firm was suffering market losses and clients were withdrawing billions.  But despite a carefully crafted image of a traditional conservative bond manager for “serious” money, PIMCO has magnified returns by making trillions of dollars in high-risk...

The Federal Reserve currently purchases $40 billion per month in an effort to keep mortgage rates low and stimulate the housing market recovery (or bubble?). Over the past year, the RMBS index has earned -0.55% in spite of (or because of) The Fed’s $40 billion per month in agency RMBS purchases. And if we compare the BRMBS index to PIMCO’s vaunted total return fund, you will see similar performance until September 2013 when RMBS rallied in terms of price compared to PIMCO’s Total Return Fund. So, despite The Fed’s $40 billion of agency MBS per month, the Bloomberg MBS index...

The eminent domain steamroller is gaining momentum. Irvington NJ now joins Richmond CA in the effort to seize the mortgages of underwater borrowers and reduce their debt. Other cities are moving forward (or backward) in the eminent domain derby. Newark NY, Pomona and Oakland CA are moving forward. Other cities are considering studies to seize mortgages such are two in Pennsylvania and a cities in Minnesota, according to Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor and one of the architects of the strategy. He should be nicknamed “Hockett to ‘em”. robert_hockett-inside-small Who is the “‘em” that Hockett want to sock...

In his latest Investment Outlook, titled "Scrooge McDucks," the outspoken Pimco co-founder said that with tax reform back on the radar, the focus should be on taxing the wealthy. Yes, he knows the rich work hard. And yes, he knows they pay an outsized share of the taxes. But Gross said the wealthy really didn't earn all of their wealth. They are lucky beneficiaries of a decades-long credit boom that poured money into the hands of the financially skilled. "You did not, as President Obama averred, 'build that,' you did not create that wave," he wrote. "You rode it. And...

Regulators should boost oversight of the largest real-estate investment trusts that use borrowed money to invest in mortgage-backed securities because rising interest rates may push the firms into asset sales that destabilize markets, the International Monetary Fund said. A version of that scenario occurred during the rise in rates that began in May, the IMF said. Repercussions might roil the REITs’ lenders, disrupt the $5.3 trillion market in which they invest and damage the broader U.S. economy, according to its Global Financial Stability Report released today. Here is the report. Mortgage REITs have suffered since the May 1 surge in...

Carrick Mollenkamp had an interesting piece today called “Special Report: Pimco shook hands with the Fed – and made a killing.” In short, the fund-management firm, led by co-founder Bill Gross, started buying tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by federally sponsored agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the third quarter of 2011 alone, Pimco’s flagship Total Return Fund, the world’s largest mutual fund, doubled its holdings of these securities to $80 billion, according to a Reuters review of trading and other data. While Pimco was building its hoard, the Fed, in a surprise move...

Richmond California is proceeding with plans that include eminent domains to help homeowners with “troubled loan.” Richmond, California, took a step toward setting up a mortgage principal reduction program to help homeowners with troubled loans, while leaving the door open to using its eminent domain powers to acquire the debt. The City Council refused to shelve a plan to seize mortgages that exceed the value of their properties, which has spurred lawsuits by U.S. banks including Wells Fargo & Co. The council agreed that any effort to acquire loans though eminent domain — the right of governments to take private...

Mark Carney will try to devalue the pound by as much as 15 percent after he takes over as Bank of England Governor in July in a last ditch attempt to cement the UK recovery, PIMCO, the world’s largest bond house, has warned. Growth in Britain is going to remain “challenged” for the next three to five years as the Government continues to shrink the public sector and cut the budget deficit. As banks and households also grapple with their excessive debts, “that leaves one policy tool outstanding, which is basically the currency”, PIMCO managing director and sterling bond head...

There Will Be Haircuts William H. GrossMay 1, 2013 “Good as Money,” proclaimed the ad for Twenty Grand Cognac. Being a beer drinker, and never having cashed in a Budweiser to pay for a fill-up at the local gas station, I said to myself “Man, that must be really good stuff!” Even in a financial meltdown I thought, you could use it in place of cash, diamonds, gold or Bitcoins! And if the Mongol hordes descend upon us during a future revolution, who wouldn’t prefer a few belts of Twenty Grand on the way out, instead of some shiny rocks...

BILL GROSS: Investment Banks Have Morphed Markets With 'Ponzi Finance' — And Time Is Almost Up Matthew BoeslerJanuary 31, 2013, 9:52 AMBill Gross, the PIMCO fund manager known as the "Bond King," is out with his February investment letter, titled "Credit Supernova!" This month, Gross tackles the relationship between credit expansion and real growth. He channels the late economist Hyman Minsky, saying the economy is now in Minsky's "Ponzi finance" phase, "when additional credit would be required just to cover increasingly burdensome interest payments, with accelerating inflation the end result." Gross writes that new credit is providing diminishing returns: "Each...

On the Friday before Christmas, President Obama announced that he was appointing Mohamed A. El-Erian, the CEO of Pacific Investment Management Company, as the chairman of his Global Development Council. The announcement didn’t get much attention, but it should. It exemplifies what’s wrong with Obama’s approach to economic policy, which amounts to: insult rich people as “fat cats,” raise their taxes, and then choose a favored few of them for special access. If you’re not familiar with El-Erian, you must not be watching CNBC or attending the World Economic Forum at Davos. The son of an Egyptian ambassador to France...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Big money managers are warning investors. They’re now citing the Bible: “Seven lean years.” No recovery till 2016. That was Jeremy Grantham back a few years ago. His GMO firm manages $104 billion. Now Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian, the co-CEOs at the $2 trillion Pimco money managers, are citing the same biblical warning to jar investors awake and prepare for the coming lean years of slow, low growth and austerity. Except in Pimco’s new warning, the future just got much, much darker for investors — no recovery until 2022. Earlier in the summer...

PIMCO: 'THE US WILL GET DOWNGRADED' Rob WileOctober 18, 2012 PIMCO has seen enough of the federal government's "fiscal theatre" and now says the U.S.'s credit rating will inevitably be slashed, Bloomberg's Tracy Withers reports. “The U.S. will get downgraded, it’s a question of when,” Withers quotes Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, as saying. “It depends on what the end of the year looks like, but it could be fairly soon after that.” If President Obama is reelected, Mather said, it's likely resolution of the country's deficit “doesn’t happen in a nice way, and we have disruption...

Bill Gross Says that Gold Holds Its Value, While – In an Era of Central Bank Money Printing- Paper Money Doesn’t Bill Gross – the world’s pre-eminent bond fund manager, nicknamed the “Bond King” – is the boss at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, with $1.8 trillion dollars under management. Gross told Bloomberg: [There's] a diminished or dying cult of both bonds and stocks from the standpoint of a belief that they can return 10% …. Gold can’t be reproduced. It could certainly be taken out of the ground in an increasing rate but there’s a limiting amount of...