Firm’s Interest in Pimco Scrutinized

California’s insurance commissioner is seeking to use Allianz AG’s possible purchase of Newport Beach-based Pimco Advisors Holdings LP to force the German insurer to increase its cooperation with an international investigation into its debts to Holocaust victims.

Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush said Tuesday in a letter to Gov. Gray Davis that Allianz has failed to provide enough information about insurance policies to the International Commission of Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

“This proposed transaction must be carefully scrutinized--preferably in the form of investigative hearings by appropriate California regulatory agencies,” said the letter. Quackenbush is a member of the international commission, chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.

Allianz said last week it is in talks to buy Pimco for about $4.4 billion, which would create one of the world’s 10 largest fund management companies. Local regulators can make it difficult for companies to conduct business in their jurisdiction by subjecting them to hearings and other lengthy processes.

“We must, as a state, adopt a stance to carefully review and put into action every option available to us to hold these companies accountable,” Quackenbush’s letter said.

At the last meeting of Eagleburger’s commission in August, Allianz said it would sample its policies to create an estimate of what it owes, rather than doing a comprehensive search. The company said a complete search of the records would be too expensive, according to Dan Edwards, a deputy insurance commissioner.

Allianz was not immediately available to comment.

“We’re very concerned with the position of Allianz not to submit their list of unpaid policies,” Edwards said.

The International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims will meet again at the end of the month. In addition to Allianz, the companies that are participating in the commission are France’s Axa SA, Italy’s Assicurazioni General SpA and Switzerland’s Zurich Financial Services AG and Credit Suisse Group unit Credit Winterthur Insurance.

Eagleburger said in August that insurance companies would have to pay about 10 times the face value of Holocaust-era insurance polices to account for inflation and changes in currency since World War II.

* PHILANTHROPIC PAIR John Hague, a managing director of Pimco, and his wife, Kelly, say they’re staying in O.C. B10