The old adage of ‘happy wife, happy life,” is ringing louder for Scott Simon, a managing director at Pacific Investment Management Co. who heads mortgage- and asset- backed securities investing.
Simon, 52, said in a telephone interview he plans to retire at the end of May after 13 years with the Newport Beach, California-based firm to focus on “my life and my wife.” Before Pimco, Simon was at Bear Stearns Cos., where he was co-head of pass-through mortgage bond trading.
Michael Cudzil, who joined Pimco from Nomura Securities International last year, will replace Simon as the co-manager of two mortgage-related funds, the Pimco GNMA Fund and Pimco Mortgage-Backed Securities Fund, according to a regulatory filing by the firm. Cudzil will run the funds along with Daniel Hyman, who is currently listed as a co-manager of the funds on Pimco’s website.
Mortgage debt is the largest holding of Pimco’s $285 billion Total Return Fund (PTTRX), after the firm last year repeated a successful bet from 2008 that the Federal Reserve would buy government-backed home-loan securities to boost the economy. The fund, managed by Bill Gross, was 42% invested in mortgages last month, according to information posed on its website. It returned 9.48% over the past year to beat 93% of competitors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
