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By Jennifer Ablan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pimco's top investment officer said on Tuesday that "late decision makers" are largely behind a rush of withdrawals from its flagship bond fund some five months after the departure of longtime manager Bill Gross, but the outflows should taper off before long.

Dan Ivascyn, group chief investment officer for Pimco, said in an interview that many institutional investors take months to decide on and execute a reallocation from one fund or firm to another. As a result, it is not surprising that outflows persist so long after Gross' departure in late September.

Ivasycn's comments came as the firm reported another $8.6 billion of outflows in February from the Pimco Total Return Fund, bringing withdrawals to $76.6 billion since Gross moved from Pimco to Janus Capital Group Inc.

"Not surprised by the outflows," Ivascyn said by phone from the firm's Newport Beach, California, headquarters. "A lot of the decisions are now delayed decisions from several months ago. We expected some of these to ripple through the new year."

The $124.7 billion fund is now fraction of its size nearly two years ago, when under Gross it ranked as the world's largest mutual fund, with $292.9 billion in assets in April 2013.

What started as a trickle of redemptions the following month accelerated as Gross' performance subsequently slipped and he became embroiled in a leadership squabble when his long-time associate Mohamed El-Erian left the firm a year ago.

It is not just the total return fund that has suffered: Investors pulled $150 billion from Pimco's U.S. open-end mutual funds last year, according to Morningstar data.

Ivascyn said that, despite the very public leadership changes at Pimco "our organization has remained quite stable."

Once the withdrawals run their course, Pimco will be in "really good shape," he added.

The outflows have not hurt the Total Return Fund's performance, he said.

In the five months since Gross left, the fund returned 3.25 percent, or 0.30 percentage point above the benchmark Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, and 0.90 percentage point above the Morningstar Intermediate Term Bond Average peer group category.

Now overseen by Scott Mather, Mark Kiesel and Mihir Worah, the fund returned 1.90 percent year-to-date through Feb. 28, eating its benchmark by 0.76 percent point.

Pacific Investment Management Co, a unit of Allianz SE, had $1.68 trillion in assets under management as of Dec. 31.

(Reporting By Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Dan Burns and Andre Grenon)

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By Jennifer Ablan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors yanked another $8.6 billion from the Pimco Total Return Fund last month, Pimco said on Tuesday in the latest indication the firm's flagship fund is still reeling from the sudden departure of co-founder Bill Gross last September.

February's outflow, the 22nd straight month of withdrawals, compared with $11.6 billion the previous month. The fund had assets under management of $124.7 billion at the end of February, down from a peak of $292.9 billion in April 2013.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pimco Group Chief Investment Officer Dan Ivascyn said: "We expected some of these (outflows) to ripple through the new year."

Pimco, which had $1.68 trillion in assets under management as of Dec. 31, has been aggressively trying to reassure clients through meetings, conference calls and advertisements that the firm remains committed to the same investment strategies.

It also has been bolstering its leadership ranks over the last year since the departure of former Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian, the result of a falling out over Gross' leadership style and investment strategy.

In the five month period ending Feb. 28, the Pimco Total Return posted returns of 3.25 percent, or 0.30 percentage point above the benchmark, and 0.90 percentage point above its Morningstar intermediate peer category.

"The departure by Bill Gross continues to negatively impact Pimco Total Return," said Todd Rosenbluth, director of ETF & Mutual Fund Research at S&P Capital IQ.

"Again, this is a slow, drawn-out bleed where institutions change managers after much debate. Outflows for Pimco are likely to continue in the months to come given decisions for some were put off from pension funds, foundations and endowments."

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Dan Burns and Andre Grenon)

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It wasn’t the news. It wasn’t an announcement about regulation. It had nothing to do with Silk Road – it was simply the Time of Day. As has been the case for three days running, the Bitcoin price was sold-off on the hour at 12h00 UTC in heavy trade. This analysis is provided by xbt.social […]

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The post Breaking: Canadian Exchange QuadrigaCX to Become World’s First Publicly Traded Bitcoin Exchange appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The government in Kiev is trying to do something that no previous Ukrainian administration has been able to — wean the country off its gas dependence on Russia.

In order to do that Kiev will have to remove energy subsidies that the government gives to households, something that its predecessors thought was a political poison pill that would sink any administration.

The IMF has spent years campaigning to get the subsidies removed, because they cripple the government's budget,  and keep Ukraine under the thumb of Russia, which supplies the gas. (Both of those conditions thus make Ukraine a bad bet for IMF investment.)

Now, as a first step towards ending the subsidies, Ukraine is set to triple the amount that domestic consumers pay for gas supplies.

It is highly likely that reform of the subsidies were made a central part of the $40 billion bailout deal brokered by the IMF. Under the deal, the IMF will inject a further $17.5 billion into Ukraine, with as much as $10 billion coming from the US and the European Union.

The problem Kiev faces is that the government is attempting to do this in the middle of a crisis with price rises reportedly reaching hyperinflation proportions and the economy tanking.

Gas imported from Russia accounted for 58% of Ukraine’s total consumption in 2013, while the country's state-owned company Navtogaz also generates large revenues from fees it charges to transport Russian gas to Europe. In exchange for geopolitical cooperation, Moscow has offered deep discounts on gas prices in the past — something that it is unlikely to repeat given its role in supporting pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine.

That poses a challenge for Kiev. Prices in  neighbouring gas-importing economies are 4 to 9 times higher  than in Ukraine, and almost half what they are in Russia, the region's largest gas exporter. The subsidies are estimated to have cost the country around 7.5% of GDP in 2012 (and with the sharp contraction of GDP over the past year are likely taking up an even larger share of output now).

As the IMF put it in 2012 (emphasis added):

The policy is proving financially and economically unaffordable. It drains government finances, sustains energy over-consumption, dampens investment in delivery systems, and undermines incentives for domestic production expansion into gas reserves that could significantly reduce Ukraine’s need for gas imports.

But that only tells half of the story.

The other side of it is whether Ukrainian households can currently afford the price hikes. The Ukrainian central bank estimates that the economy shrank by 6.7% last year and is conservatively expected to contract by between 4% to 5% in 2015.

However, the central bank has become more concerned of late with runaway inflation, which was 24.9% in December. In an extraordinary move it hiked its main interest rate by 10 percentage points to 30% today in a desperate attempt to hold back the rate of price rises as the country's currency collapses.

Michael Birnbaum, the Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post, reports that the government aims to "shift subsidies to ease blow on most vulnerable". Given how widespread the economic damage of the crisis has been, what this might mean in practice is they will end up simply shifting the burden of the subsidies to another part of the government's budget.

In other words, if Ukraine's partners want the country to wriggle out from under Moscow's thumb they are very likely going to have to pay to do it.

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Didn’t it tickle your fancy yesterday to find that Bitcoin starts the month of March at the very top of the Wall Street Journal with a banner ad for their feature article? (I’ll assume for the sake of argument that you read the daily bible of the financial world as religiously as it is printed.) […]

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