Pimco to Launch Fund Linked to TALF Plan Soon

Pimco, the world's largest bond fund manager, plans to launch a closed-end asset-backed fund linked to the U.S. asset plan, TALF, in the next 30 days, its Asia president and director said on Wednesday.

Under the U.S. plan to sop up bad assets now choking bank balance sheets, public-private funds will get opportunities to buy so-called "legacy" securities with a combination of private and government capital, possibly levered up by the government.

The fund is being structured to deliver income flows to investors via interest payments from the asset-backed securities that PIMCO is buying, Brian Baker told Reuters on the sidelines of a financial conference in Shanghai.

The fund will borrow from the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to buy asset-backed securities backed by consumer receivables and consumer loans. For a factbox on U.S. toxic asset plan.

"We believe this financial crisis will be resolved by the U.S. and other core financial market rehabilitation. So we want to invest in these core countries where the financial rehabilitation will be led and where policy makers will be most aggressive in addressing the financial crisis," Baker said.

Over the course of 2008, Pimco reduced its exposure to the emerging markets, he said.

Pimco, the world's best known bond manager under chief investment officer Bill Gross, has about $15.6 billion of assets under management in Asia as of December 31, 2008. The firm as a whole manages $747 billion, according to the company's Web site.

Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, a unit of Germany's Allianz, made its foray into the Asia ex-Japan market in 1993, and opened offices in Singapore and Hong Kong.

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