‘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.