Morningstar, Inc. named Bill Gross ('71) the Fixed-Income Fund Manager of the Decade on January 12. Gross manages PIMCO Total Return (PTTRX), Managers PIMCO Bond (MBDFX), and Harbor Bond (HABDX)

A three-time winner of Morningstar's Fixed-Income Fund Manager of the Year award, Gross has the final say in the selection of PIMCO's portfolio holdings. Gross and his fellow investors at PIMCO made many intuitive calls over the past decade. Combining PIMCO's long-term macroeconomic outlook and short-term cyclical factors, Gross made profitable calls on bond sectors, currencies and the housing bubble.

"Gross is very well-known for melding the top-down macroeconomic views with the bottom-up work that PIMCO's analysts do," said Karen Dolan, director of fund analysis for Morningstar, Inc. "Without those top-down considerations, this fund would not have had the success it had. They really nailed a lot of the calls along the way."

PIMCO Total Return, the largest mutual fund with more than $192 billion in assets, had a 10-year annualized total return of 7.7 percent for the decade, with similarly strong performance in the three- and five-year periods.

"Bill Gross and PIMCO are widely considered to be among the best in the business," Dolan said. "Despite the fund's immense size, he has maintained the fund's perch at the top of its category, making investors a lot of money in the process."

Bill Gross is a founder of PIMCO, managing director and co-CIO in the Newport Beach office. He has been associated with PIMCO for more than 38 years and oversees the management of more than $800 billion of fixed-income securities.

Gross is the author of numerous articles on the bond market, as well as the book "Everything You've Heard About Investing is Wrong," published in 1997.

Gross received the Bond Market Association's Distinguished Service Award. In 1996, he became the first portfolio manager inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society's hall of fame for his major contributions to the advancement of fixed-income analysis and portfolio management.

Gross has 40 years of investment experience and holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson. He received his undergraduate degree from Duke University.