February 15, 2021 BARRON’S 27
FUND PROFILE
Talking With Janet Rilling
Co-Manager, Wells Fargo Core Plus Bond
Photograph byKAT SCHLEICHER
A Nimble
Bond Fund
StaysonTop
F
resh out of the University of Wisconsin, Janet
Rilling was working as an auditor for one of
the major accounting firms when she had a
career-changing epiphany.
“I was seeing a variety of businesses up
close during the audit process and realized
that it wasn’t the ticking and tying that I en-
joyed, but learning about the management strategies and
what the drivers were of the business,” says Rilling, who
went back to the university for her master’s degree in
finance from the Applied Security Analysis program. “I
really liked the idea of being able to manage a portfolio
while in school,” she adds.
More than 25 years later, Rilling is the head of the
multisector fixed-income-plus and high-yield team at
Wells Fargo Asset Management, which in 2005 ac-
quired Rilling’s previous employer, Strong Capital
Management.
The past year has been an interesting time for fixed-
income investors, to be sure, but Rilling and her team
have been adept at navigating the market’s twists and
turns. In fact, a hallmark of their strategy is focusing on
a six-month investment horizon, with the goal of antici-
pating market inflection points and tilting allocations
accordingly. “It’s not that we turn the portfolio over ev-
ery six months,” she is quick to add. “But we’re comfort-
able making changes.”
Rilling, 52, credits that approach with giving her team
an edge in running the $1.9 billionWells Fargo Core
Plus Bondfund (ticker: STYAX), which is up 8.9% over
the past 12 months—better than 93% of its Morningstar
peers—and has returned an average of 4.9% a year over
the past decade, better than 84% of its peers.
The fund owns a minimum of 65% of its assets in
sectors included in the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggre-
gate Bond Index—Treasuries and U.S. investment grade
By SARAH MAX