Earlier Attempts

Pimco has tried to expand into stocks before; an initial attempt in the 1980s failed after its bond traders overwhelmed a handful of equity managers at strategy meetings, eventually prompting them to quit. In 1999, Pimco’s then-parent company tried to start a separate unit, which ended in legal trouble after regulators accused it of allowing a hedge fund to engage in market timing. The unit paid fines and repayments to settle the allegations, without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Pimco’s co-founder Bill Gross vowed not to repeat those mistakes when, with former CEO El-Erian, the firm took another stab at shifting beyond bonds. Pimco hired Neel Kashkari to oversee its stock push. In a 2010 interview, Gross said he might have contributed to the embedded bond bias within Pimco, and that he welcomed the balance that an equities business would bring.

That business got off to a slow start, with the funds posting subpar returns. The EqS Pathfinder fund, the first of Pimco’s active stock funds, has trailed 59 percent of peers in the past five years. The effort faced another setback when Kashkari, who previously oversaw the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program in the 2008 financial crisis, left Pimco in January 2013, saying he wanted to pursue a career in public service. A year later, Maisonneuve joined in London from Schroders Plc to lead the push.

Pimco Turmoil

Executive turnover at the equities business was only a small part of the broader turmoil at Pimco. In January 2014, El- Erian left Pimco, which prompted reports of clashes between him and Gross. Then in September, Gross abruptly left the firm after losing a power struggle. In the weeks before his departure, Gross had expressed in an internal meeting that he wanted Pimco to return to a simpler model of managing just bonds, and abandon strategies including equities and real estate. Days later, Pimco hired five people for its global equities team, and then added two more in December.

Better Weather

Shuttering a unit that’s failed to attract assets after five years is “normal” for the industry, and “those products haven’t gained traction,” Rosenbluth said. New products cost the firm money to set up and run, and products that fail to grow assets hurt profitability.

Maisonneuve is the only woman in Pimco’s 12-person Global Executive Leadership team, and one of 10 female managing directors at the firm, which has 66 managing director positions in total. Before joining Pimco, she managed stock funds in Schroders’s London office for nine years, overseeing strategies such as Schroder International Alpha Fund as the head of global and international stocks.

She began her career working with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China. She has a master’s degree in Mandarin Chinese from Dauphine University in Paris, a master’s in business administration from Ecole Superieure Libre des Sciences Commerciales Appliquees in Paris and a degree in political economics from People’s University in Beijing.