BlackRock OCIO Exec Named Pensions Trust Chief

The UK’s £8.5 billion ($11.3 billion) Pensions Trust has hired a BlackRock managing director as its new CIO, the pension fund has confirmed.

Cliff Speed, who at BlackRock had operated as an outsourced-CIO for “many significant pension funds,” replaces ex-CIO David Adkins, who departed for Lloyds Bank’s pension funds in July.

He joins fellow new hires Emmanuel Bocquet and John Steel, who came to the Pensions Trust from Aerion Fund Management in June.

“We are delighted with Cliff’s arrival,” said Pensions Trust CEO Mike Ramsey in a statement. “With our recent appointments of Emanuel Bocquet as chief strategist and John Steel as operations manager, we now have a first-class investment team, which positions us well to realize our ambitious growth plans.”

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Before working at BlackRock, Speed was a senior actuary at Bank of America’s pensions and insurance team. He’s also served as CIO of insurer Paternoster and worked as an investment consultant.

Speed is a council member and fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries.

Nearly two years have passed since Bill Gross exited PIMCO, and the former co-founder is now urging the court to “put a stop to PIMCO’s behavior” in victimizing him.

In a new motion in his $200 million lawsuit against the Newport Beach-based firm, Gross and his lawyers claimed PIMCO has “engaged in willful and bad-faith obstruction” of Gross’ efforts to pursue the case.

Specifically, the filing alleged PIMCO proposed a deposition in London on November 2 and another in Hong Kong the next day.

“PIMCO knows that this is not possible,” Gross’ counsel continued. “Discovery is not, and should not be, a game to be manipulated in this manner. PIMCO has now cost Mr. Gross nearly a year of the case through its bad faith conduct and improper delays.”

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Furthermore, PIMCO “made no effort” to give Gross information regarding the firm’s compensation practices for other executives, he alleged—information the now-Janus executive needs “to demonstrate PIMCO’s custom and practice for compensating departing employees as well as its own interpretation of its obligation under the profit sharing plan.”

Gross’ lawsuit has asserted that he is owed a bonus of nearly $80 million for the third quarter of 2014, as well as a 20% share of PIMCO’s $1.3 billion bonus pool. Last April, PIMCO claimed that Gross “freely and knowingly waived any right he might have had to such a payment.”

To disprove this, Gross has requested records of “PIMCO’s treatment of other employees that engaged in conduct similar to what PIMCO alleges justified [his] ouster,” but the firm has also withheld such information, he claimed.

Gross is also seeking information regarding PIMCO’s investment strategy—“both before and after [his] tenure”—to show a move from “conservative and staid bond funds” to “higher-profit, higher-risk investment activities,” according to the motion.

“This drive towards ever more profit from fees and investment risk also became a drive by these younger PIMCO executives [former co-CIO Mohamed El-Erian, now-group CIO Dan Ivascyn, and others] to seize a greater share of PIMCO’s profits by wrongly terminating Mr. Gross,” the motion claimed.

Such delays in scheduling depositions, gathering evidence, and providing information “goes far beyond mere aggressive litigation,” Gross concluded, “and constitutes sanctionable discovery abuse.”