Bill Gross, the 70-year-old king of bonds, rushed through the offices of his $2 trillion empire on a Friday morning distributing hand-written notes. He knew his reign was over.
The billionaire co-founder of Pacific Investment Management Co. and its undisputed ruler for four decades was about to be overthrown. So just before 5 a.m. that day, on Sept. 26, he walked into PIMCO's headquarters in Newport Beach, California, and quietly placed notes on the desks of more than a dozen colleagues.
"Keep doing a great job," Gross wrote on trade tickets used to buy and sell bonds. Of PIMCO, he wrote: "Look after her."
Gross's exit — an event that, not long ago, would have seemed unthinkable — unleashed a crisis that PIMCO is still trying to contain. His departure was followed by record withdrawals from the mutual fund he once ran, and which he built into the world's biggest. Competitors swooped in, poaching clients from a firm that oversaw more assets in bonds than any competitor ever did. The government reached out to financial firms to ensure Gross's departure didn't destabilize the $100 trillion bond market.
Balls, Thimons
Interviews with 25 current and former PIMCO employees, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal matters, paint a complex picture of the events that led to Gross's departure, including details that have never before been published. The resignation in January of PIMCO Chief Executive Officer and Gross's heir apparent Mohamed El-Erian, 56, had prompted media reports of infighting at PIMCO, and resulted in a management reshuffle that strengthened some of the firm's younger executives. At the same time, Gross's main fund was trailing competitors and clients had started to pull money.
Gross spent much of the past year hunting down employees who he believed were leaking information about the internal clashes to the press, according to the interviews. Among them were money managers Andrew Balls, one of Gross's newly appointed deputy investment chiefs, and Joshua Thimons. Gross tried to fire both but his effort was thwarted by PIMCO's new CEO Douglas Hodge, 57, and President Jay Jacobs.
On at least three occasions, Gross proposed to step back as tensions within PIMCO worsened.
September Showdown
Behind closed doors, the billionaire also opposed the firm's expansion into stocks and real estate, areas seen by others as crucial to position the firm as the bond rally on which PIMCO's growth had been built showed signs of waning. In pushing for a return to a simpler business model, he questioned why the firm needed some of the executives it had hired.
By September, as Gross revived plans to fire Balls, 41, PIMCO's new senior managers turned against him. Several of the firm's key executives offered to resign. When Gross proposed again to take a smaller role, give up management responsibilities and hand over his main fund to a successor by the end of 2015, PIMCO executives were considering his ouster.
Rather than suffer the humiliation of being fired, Gross decided to walk away from the firm that he had started in 1971. A few hours later on that Friday morning, he was on a plane bound for Denver to join Janus Capital Group Inc., the money manager run by his former general counsel and operating chief Richard Weil, 51. 'Enduring Legacy'
"Bill Gross left an enduring legacy at our firm and we are grateful for his contributions," PIMCO's Hodge said in a statement. "At PIMCO we are guided by a set of core values of putting our clients first, acting with integrity always, being respectful of each other and delivering excellence. This is the foundation upon which PIMCO is built and these are the principles that will carry us forward into the future."
Steven Shapiro, a spokesman for Janus with Communications Strategy Group, declined to comment.
Gross built PIMCO with some of the best long-term investing track records, and was the face of the bond market with television appearances almost every day. Assets at the firm doubled between 2010 and 2013, making Gross one of the best- compensated money managers, with a bonus of about $290 million in 2013, a fortune even by Wall Street standards.
An Ohio native who graduated from Duke University with a psychology degree in 1966, Gross built a reputation unparalleled among mutual fund managers, with his main fund, the $162.8 billion PIMCO Total Return, beating 96 percent of peers over 15 years, according to research firm Morningstar Inc. The fund has become a staple in the 401(k) retirement accounts of millions of Americans.
Vietnam Vet
His departure triggered a combined $60.5 billion in withdrawals in the past three months from PIMCO Total Return, which at its peak in April 2013 was the world's largest mutual fund, with $293 billion. Assets in the fund have since shrunk by 44 percent.
Gross, who spent three years in the Navy and served in Vietnam, was obsessed with performance. When his flagship fund trailed 77 percent of peers in 2011, he apologized to clients, calling it a "stinker" of a year and reassuring them he hadn't lost his touch. After a rebound the next year, he examined his legacy in an investment outlook that said the careers of great investors were fueled by a credit expansion that may be ending, and that the real test of his investing prowess was yet to come.
"Am I a great investor?" he wrote in an April 2013 investment outlook. "No, not yet."
Tensions Surface
A month later, the Federal Reserve indicated it would unwind its bond purchases. Gross miscalculated the impact of those actions, giving his fund its biggest loss in almost two decades. PIMCO Total Return trailed 65 percent of peers in 2013, even as it beat its benchmark, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Clients started to pull money that month, in May 2013, and have continued redeeming every month since.
Around this time, tensions within PIMCO were boiling to the surface. In June 2013, Gross lashed out at then-CEO El-Erian in front of a dozen members of the firm's investment executives. He said he had an investing record of more than four decades, and asked El-Erian what he could point to. El-Erian, who received a bonus of about $230 million in 2013, was seen by some within PIMCO as a shock absorber between Gross and other employees, according to three people familiar with the matter. As their relationship deteriorated, Gross agreed in an executive committee meeting to hiring a mediator to try to mend it. After a search and a scheduled meeting with the mediator, Gross backtracked and said he had never agreed to a mediation.
El-Erian Resigns
As El-Erian informed the firm in December 2013 that he was going to leave, Gross offered to step back instead. El-Erian, a contributor to Bloomberg View, stuck with his decision and on Jan. 21 announced his resignation. Soon after, Marc Seidner, a high-profile generalist fund manager and member of PIMCO's investment committee who had worked with El-Erian at Harvard University's endowment, quit. Seidner passed up an opportunity to serve as one of three deputies to Gross, along with Daniel Ivascyn, 45, and Balls, choosing instead to join Boston-based money manager Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co.
Those departures strengthened others in the firm and weakened Gross. PIMCO named six deputy chief investment officers — Ivascyn, Balls, Mark Kiesel, Virginie Maisonneuve, Scott Mather, and Mihir Worah — and Gross promised that each would have "some empowerment that probably was lacking to some extent in the past."
Standing Ovation
In the weeks that followed, Gross tried to close ranks. He spent more than 20 minutes before a firm-wide meeting to discuss the media scrutiny that had beset the company, a speech in which he disparaged El-Erian, according to two people. When he ended to a standing ovation from the audience, including Hodge and Ivascyn, at least one executive declined to rise. Thimons, a managing director outspoken in his objections to Gross's leadership, disagreed with his comments and refused to stand, according to a person who was present.
El-Erian's departure had prompted media scrutiny and reports of clashes between El-Erian and Gross. The Wall Street Journal cited one example where Gross complained that El-Erian wouldn't let him run the firm's entire $2 trillion in assets.
"I'm Secretariat," Gross said, referring to the famous racehorse, according to the Journal. "Why would you bet on anyone other than Secretariat?"
To stop the reports, Gross set up interrogations of members of the investment committee, managing directors, and lower- ranking money managers. He carried around a three-ring binder of printed-out e-mails and hand-written notes to find out who was talking to the press.
'Mr. X'
Among his suspects were Balls, a former journalist, and Thimons, the executive who had remained seated during the standing ovation and who had organized a going-away party for El-Erian. Gross sought to fire Balls, a move opposed by PIMCO's new executives. Gross gave in and agreed not to pursue the matter at that time.
"Andrew and Josh are senior and respected professionals at our firm, and we have complete confidence in their leadership and integrity," Daniel Tarman, a PIMCO spokesman, said in a statement.
Balls and Thimons didn't return e-mails seeking comment.
Gross later told DoubleLine Capital LP's Jeffrey Gundlach that he had been chasing a "Mr. X," a person sympathetic to El-Erian who was trying to sabotage him by revealing internal conversations. Angering Management
While clamping down on leaks inside the firm, Gross called Reuters in early March, telling the news organization that El- Erian had been trying to undermine him and that he was responsible for the Wall Street Journal article.
Gross apologized internally for speaking to Reuters. A month later, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, he angered his colleagues again by calling on El-Erian to explain the reason for his departure. That interview prompted Jacobs to call an emergency meeting of the executive committee without telling Gross. After the meeting, Jacobs told Gross that he'd been suspended from media appearances indefinitely, provoking an outburst by Gross, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
PIMCO managers worried that Gross was becoming increasingly uncontrollable in public appearances after he strolled on stage at Morningstar's investment conference wearing sunglasses and referring to himself as the bond market's Justin Bieber. He also made a lengthy allusion to the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," suggesting he wished he could hypnotize journalists into writing positive things about him.
Deep Divisions
At one point, weeks after El-Erian's departure, Gross was seen yelling at Hodge and Jacobs in a glass room just off the trading floor, in plain view of more than 60 people. Later, he told colleagues he'd staged the dressing-down publicly to intimidate others.
Amid the media scrutiny, Gross demanded public support from his colleagues for his role at PIMCO. Hodge obliged in a "viewpoint" in August on the website extolling Gross's investing prowess.
"We are unaware of any person who has created more wealth for more people in the history of fixed income investing than Bill Gross," Hodge wrote.
The divisions within PIMCO went beyond Gross's media appearances and his management style. Gross's view of PIMCO's future was increasingly diverging from that of management. He was unhappy with the expansion into equities and wanted to return to a simpler model.
