After building the biggest and most powerful bond fund in the world over three decades, Bill Gross engineered a hasty exit. With his deputies at Pacific Investment Management Co. threatening to quit and management debating his ouster, the bond king was losing control of the $2 trillion firm he created almost singlehandedly.
He picked up the phone and cold-called DoubleLine Capital LP, asking for Jeffrey Gundlach, a money manager with a personality as big as his own, to discuss joining the much smaller crosstown competitor. The talks didn’t go anywhere and Gross agreed to run a startup fund with no assets at Janus Capital Group Inc., a struggling stock-fund manager 1,000 miles away in Denver led by his former employee.
