Pimco MD steps down less than a year after rejoining firm
New York
PAUL McCulley has stepped down from his role as managing director and chief economist at Pacific Investment Management Co less than a year after rejoining the firm.
"Paul returned to Pimco last May after being recruited by Bill Gross, with whom he had a close friendship and association for more than 20 years," Daniel Ivascyn, Pimco's group chief investment officer, said in a statement on Friday.
Mr McCulley's last day at the Newport Beach, California-based firm will be Feb 28.
The US$1.68 trillion money manager said this month that it has hired Joachim Fels, former chief economist at Morgan Stanley, as global economic adviser and a managing director, a move that had raised questions about Mr McCulley's role at Pimco, a unit of German insurer Allianz SE.
The manager of the world's biggest bond mutual fund is seeking to reassure clients and fortify its ranks after a year of record redemptions and the departures of co-chief investment officers Mr Gross and Mohamed El-Erian.
In the past year, the firm has hired 28 senior professionals, including Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to two US presidents, and Nobel laureate Michael Spence, as consultants on economic policy.
Mr McCulley said that he accepted the position last year to work side-by-side with Mr Gross.
"My mission here is complete," he said in the statement. "I will continue doing the things I love in other spaces, possibly in the academic arena. Pimco will always be Camelot in my heart."
Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc said Manuel Medina-Mora, the bank's co-president and head of global consumer banking, will retire on June 1.
The bank disclosed his retirement plans in a memo from chief executive officer Michael Corbat on Friday, which said Mr Medina-Mora will remain chairman of the bank's Mexican unit, Banco Nacional de Mexico, known as Banamex.
Banamex's CEO, Ernesto Torres Cantu, will report directly to Mr Corbat, according to the memo.
The bank will name Mr Medina-Mora's successor "in the near future", according to the memo.
At the same time, Citigroup, which disclosed a US$400 million loan fraud last year and had plans for a dividend increase scrapped by the Federal Reserve, cut Mr Corbat's pay by 9 per cent to about US$13.2 million.
Mr Corbat, 54, received deferred stock valued at US$3.51 million on Feb 18, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. He's set to get the same amount in performance-share units, plus a cash bonus of about US$4.68 million and a US$1.5 million salary, based on the firm's previously disclosed compensation plan.
Citigroup's stock was the worst performer among the six largest US banks last year, gaining 3.8 per cent as profit fell 47 per cent. After the loan fraud in Mexico and the Fed's objection to the bank's plan for managing capital, the firm set aside about US$9 billion to settle claims tied to mortgage-backed securities and alleged rigging of currency markets. Bloomberg, Reuters
