The folks at TCW [profile] may soon snatch a crown from a famous and nearby rival.

Los Angeles-based TCW's Metropolitan West Total Return Bond Fund reached $81.5 billion in AUM on October 31. And that, John Gittelsohn of Bloomberg reports, puts the TCW fund "within striking distance of the biggest actively managed bond mutual fund around, the $82.6-billion Pimco Total Return Fund [profile] from Newport Beach, California-based Pimco.

Laird Landmann Trust Company of the West Group Managing Director

MetWest Total Return has tripled in size in three and half years. On the flip side, Pimco Total Return, which was run by star bond fund PM and Pimco co-founder Bill Gross before he jumped to Janus two years ago, has suffered an AUM drop of more than 70 percent in the same time frame. (The fund was once the biggest mutual fund of any kind in the world.)

Meanwhile, the largest fixed income fund is a passively managed one, the $143.3-billion Vanguard Total Bond Market Index. And Bloomberg notes that another Pimco fund, the $67.6-billion Pimco Income Fund, is on the rise.

MetWest was founded in 1996 by a trio of Pimco alumni: Steve Kane, Laird Landmann, and Tad Rivelle. TCW (also in LA) bought rival MetWest in 2010, and Kane, Landmann, and Rivelle are now three of the four group managing directors on TCW's fixed income team. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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