Rahul Seksaria, a money manager at Pacific Investment Management Co. running inflation-protection strategies, was dismissed after CME Group Inc. fined him for improper trades that resulted in the transfer of client money to his personal account.

Seksaria in April 2012 placed trades that improperly sent $2,675 of client funds into his personal account, CME, operator of the world’s biggest futures market, said on its website. CME this month barred him from using its markets until after March 19 and ordered Seksaria to repay the $2,675 as well as a fine of $65,000.

“Mr. Seksaria has been dismissed from the firm based on a violation of the firm’s policy regarding personal trading,” Daniel Tarman, a spokesman for Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, said today in an e-mailed statement. “While the amount involved in this matter was small, Pimco’s code of ethics mandates that all employees must abide by the highest standards of personal and professional conduct.”

Seksaria’s last day at Pimco was Dec. 19. Two small funds run by Seksaria, the Pimco Real Income Fund 2029 Fund and the Pimco Real Income Fund 2019 Fund, were liquidated on Nov. 14, according to data posted on Pimco’s website. The two funds had less than $20 million in combined assets at the end of October.

Seksaria didn’t return e-mails sent through his LinkedIn account. A phone number listed in the directory under his name was disconnected and Pimco didn’t provide any contact details for him.

Reducing Expectations

Seksaria was a senior vice president, trader and money manager at Pimco. He focused on strategies designed to adjust for inflation, such as investing in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, according to a fund filing last year. Before joining Pimco in 2002, he worked in trading and structuring in energy and other commodities at Enron Corp.

Bond traders have reduced inflation expectations this year as oil prices have tumbled and the dollar has climbed, making it cheaper for consumers in the U.S. to purchase goods from abroad. A measure of the outlook for annual inflation over the 10-year period derived from yields on TIPS, known as the break-even rate, fell to 1.64 percentage points from 2.31 percentage points in January.