Dan Ivascyn, who succeeded Bill Gross as Pimco's new chief investment officer nearly a year ago, acknowledges that life at the firm is now "less glamorous."
Unlike Gross, who was widely known as "the Bond King" and has rarely been away from the headlines in both mainstream and social media in recent years, Ivascyn is rarely on TV and doesn't tell the world about any big investment calls through Twitter.
Ivascyn wouldn't have it any other way. He says he is determined to keep the focus on improving returns and convincing investors that they should stay with Pimco and give it new funds to manage.
He may be starting to show signs of modest success but it is a long road back.
Since Gross' shocking exit from Pacific Investment Management Co last September, the firm he had helped launch and had built into a $2 trillion investment powerhouse has suffered big outflows of cash. Pimco's assets under management had dropped to $1.52 trillion as of June 30 from $1.92 trillion at the beginning of 2014 before infighting between Gross and CEO Mohamed El-Erian led to the departure of both in an eighth-month period.
But in recent months the exodus from the firm's flagship Pimco Total Return Fund has slowed from $11.6 billion in January to just $2.7 billion in May and $3 billion in net outflows in June. Figures for July showed a further decline of $2.5 billion, according to Pimco on Tuesday.
Its strong relative performance has helped to start to turn the tide.
The fund, which lost its crown as the world's largest bond fund in April to the $144.2 billion Vanguard Total Bond Market Index fund, is returning 1.56 percent so far this year, surpassing 96 percent of other funds in its intermediate-term peer category.
And Alina Lamy, senior analyst of markets research at Morningstar, said that the $47.4 billion Pimco Income Fund , which Ivascyn personally oversees, is also outperforming 96 percent of its peers in the multisector-bond category. The fund has attracted $8.7 billion since Gross' departure, though that is tiny against the $119.4 billion that has left Pimco Total Return in that time, according to Lamy.
Some major clients are no longer considering redeeming money - or in bond market parlance they have removed Pimco from their "watchlists."