Bill Gross has reached a roughly $81m settlement of his lawsuit against Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco), ending a bitter 2-1/2-year drama over the well-known bond investor's abrupt departure from one of the world's biggest asset managers.
Terms of the accord were not disclosed, but were confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the terms were confidential.
Mr Gross and Pimco said in a joint statement the settlement was “amicable,” and that Pimco will donate the proceeds to charity.
“Pimco has always been family to me, and, like any family, sometimes there are disagreements,” Mr Gross, a Pimco co-founder, said in the statement.
The accord quietly ends an acrimonious battle over the 72-year-old billionaire's September 2014 exit from Pimco, where he had been chief investment officer. That battle played out first in the media, and then in Mr Gross' $200m lawsuit.
Mr Gross, who now works for Denver-based Janus Capital, left Pimco following negative reports about his leadership and weak returns at Pimco Total Return, once the world's largest bond mutual fund with $293bn of assets at its peak.
In his October 2015 lawsuit, Mr Gross accused a greedy “cabal” of Pimco executives, including group chief investment officer Dan Ivascyn, of plotting to oust him so they could divide his 20 per cent share in Pimco's bonus pool among themselves.
The pool totaled $1.3bn in 2013, and Mr Gross' pay that year topped $300m, according to the complaint filed in California Superior Court.
Pimco, a Newport Beach, California-based unit of German insurer Allianz, countered that Gross' “egregious misconduct,” including abusive behaviour toward colleagues, would have justified his firing had he not resigned.
Once known on Wall Street as the “Bond King,” Gross left Pimco eight months after his second-in-command Mohamed El-Erian quit, in part because of Gross' management style. Gross is worth $2.5bn, according to Forbes magazine.
Reuters
