FOR Bill Gross, quitting Pimco’s US$222 billion Total Return Fund to take over a US$13 million fund at Janus Capital is like resigning the U.S. presidency to become city manager of Ashtabula, Ohio.

    Gross stunned the investing world on Friday with his abrupt departure from Pimco, the US$2 trillion asset manager he co-founded in 1971 and where he had run the Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest bond fund, for more than 27 years.

    Come this morning, Gross will join Denver-based Janus and next month will take over its Unconstrained Bond Fund, which was only organized in May. Janus is an asset management firm once known for picking hot Internet stocks.

    “For Gross, this is a new slate albeit a small one,” said Jeff Tjornehoj, senior analyst at Lipper Inc.

    Small may be overstating the Janus fund, at least in comparison with the Total Return behemoth. The relationship between the Janus Fund and the Total Return fund is the same as that of the population of Ashtabula with the population of the United States: 314 million.

    (SD-Agencies)