John Bell is a vice president of Loomis, Sayles & Company and portfolio manager for the Loomis Sayles fixed income group.

Previously, John was a vice president and portfolio manager at Back Bay Advisors, and was head of credit at Jurika & Voyles, where he helped manage fixed income assets, including high yield. He was also president and principal for Sextant Investments, a merchant bank, and director of research at Dabney/ Resnick, Inc., a brokerage specializing in distressed securities. John was one of the original nonbank buyers of bank loans starting in 1988, when he was in charge of developing the bank loan effort at First Capital Holdings/First Capital Life Insurance. He later became director of research at First Capital, which managed nearly $10 billion in assets, including over $4 billion of high yield bonds and over $300 million of bank loans.

John earned a BBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

John co-manages all of the Loomis Sayles bank loan products with Michael Klawitter, with whom he has worked since 2002. John joined Loomis Sayles in 2001 to build the firm’s bank loan capabilities. John was among the first nonbank buyers of bank loans and his work pre-dates the first bank loan index, which began in 1992. The team began managing bank loans in a conservative style, and later expanded to include several more flexible and structured products.