LOS ANGELES -- Bill Gross, the founder of Pacific Investment Management Co. who left the firm during internal acrimony last year, is suing the company for breach of contract.
In a 19-page Superior Court complaint filed Thursday in Orange County, Calif., Gross accuses current and former Pacific Investment Management executives of leaking disparaging information about him to the news media and ultimately engineering his ouster.
The suit lays out details of his clashes with other executives, including former chief executive and co-chief investment officer Mohamed El-Erian, over the direction of the company.
The complaint in particular targets Andrew Balls, the company's chief investment officer for global fixed income, whom Gross accuses of leaking information about high-level executive clashes to the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
A spokesman for Pacific Investment Management didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did El-Erian.
The Gross suit also alleges that the company's current chief investment officer, Daniel Ivascyn, conspired with other executives to force Gross out.
The suit says Gross' departure caused him to lose "significant positions" in stock options and other compensation that had not yet vested.
The lawsuit comes just as the Newport Beach, Calif.-based company, a dominant player in the multitrillion-dollar global bond business, had been seen as recovering from the turmoil surrounding Gross' exit a year ago, when the investor decamped to rival Janus Capital Group.
The departure caused Pacific Investment Management investors to accelerate what had already been huge withdrawals from the company's Total Return Fund, which Gross had run for decades. The fund, which peaked at more than $292 billion under management in April 2013, had about $95.5 billion as of Sept. 30, with most of the outflow coming in the months after Gross' departure.
Business on 10/09/2015