Trending on peHUB this week: BlackRock, Capital Dynamics, PIMCO, Deltek, Thoma Bravo, VC portfolio services, small-cap stocks, Right Now Economy, Amulet Capital, Harlem Globetrotters

This week on the jobs board there are vacancies at global asset manager Capital Dynamics, BlackRock Private Equity Partners and PIMCO. On the venture side, Two Sigma Investments is also hiring in New York.

The sale of Deutsche Bank funds business is off after Guggenheim Partners walks away from buying RREEF.

Pacific Investment Management Co. is raising billions of dollars for a fund that will behave similar to those managed by WL Ross & Co., the private investment firm that, since the recession’s onset, has been buying into community banks with expectations that the industry will consolidate. Like WL Ross & Co., Pimco is not going [...]

Unprecedented low interest rates could boost the LBO business by driving retail money into the kind of mutual funds that invest in leveraged finance. The thought came to mind as I read Bill Gross’s latest commentary on the economy and the markets. The co-CIO of PIMCO is not a happy camper. Gross’s monthly investment commentary, [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Neel Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs banker who ran the government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, has been tapped to head Pimco’s new investment initiatives. His appointment underscores Bill Gross’ and Mohamed El-Erian’s push to deepen the firm’s products and services beyond fixed income, Pimco’s bread and butter, and into [...]

We’d hate to let down followers of the Pimco mortgage fund story, so as per usual for the past several quarters, here are the performance numbers on PIMCO Distressed Mortgage Fund I, L.P., a $2.8 billion pool designated to invest in secondary distressed mortgage securities.

I’d like to point out first that since our last update of this fund’s negative performance, we’ve learned that Pimco is earning $3 million per quarter to manage the government’s commercial paper funding facility (CPFF) program. We’ve also seen Bill Gross, Pimco’s head, come under more criticism for his influence over government policy. On Pimco’s mortgage trading activities, he said he “assumes that Pimco traders working on behalf of the government don’t talk to their peers trading for Pimco’s own accounts, The New York Times reported, adding, “Then again, he said he doesn’t know for sure what happens after hours.” From the NY Times:

Yesterday we wrote that Pacific Investment Management Company, or Pimco, has raised $224.2 million for its secondary distressed mortgage fund. The target is $3 billion. It launched fundraising about 7 months ago, so considering its $3 billion target, the effort isn’t racking up commitments at a breakneck pace.

But then again, who is these days, I thought.

Well, today I obtained a copy of the year-end results for the first distressed mortgage fund, and it gives me a pretty good idea as to why the fundraising on this effort is slow. The fund, called PIMCO Distressed Mortgage Fund I LP, had a total of $2.8 billion in commitments.

Since it’s inception on Oct. 31, 2007, the fund has earned