October 8, 2015, 11:33 A.M. ET By Chris Dieterich Legendary bond investor Bill Gross is suing Pacific Investment Management Co., the firm he helped found. Gross left Pimco last year to join Janus Capital Group (JNS) in a haze of bitter accusations. On Thursday, Gross filed a complaint oozing with vitriol for his former employer, claiming damages “in no event less than $200 million.” The suit claims that younger executives turned on Gross in a compensation-fuelled “power struggle” that led to his ouster. Get ready for knock-down, drag-out fight. This is only the introduction of the complaint: “Driven by a lust for power, greed, and a desire to improve their own financial position and reputation at the expense of investors and decency, a cabal of Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (“PIMCO”) managing directors plotted to drive founder Bill Gross out of PIMCO in order to take, without compensation, Gross’s percentage ownership in the profitability of PIMCO. Their improper, dishonest, and unethical behavior must now be exposed. Plaintiff Bill Gross founded defendant PIMCO over 40 years ago and has been intimately connected with its investment activities since that time. As a founder and senior executive, as well as a world-renowned investor, Mr. Gross received substantial income as PIMCO grew and established itself as one of the leading fixed income security investment firms in the world. Mr. Gross’s ongoing success at PIMCO proved to be his undoing. In the minds of certain younger executives at PIMCO, Mr. Gross’s ongoing presence at the company checked their own financial and career ambitions. Under PIMCO’s profit-sharing plan Mr. Gross was entitled to receive 20% of the entire profit sharing bonus pool each year. By forcing him out of PIMCO, the younger executives would split Mr. Gross’s share of the bonus pool amongst themselves. In addition to receiving compensation consistent with his skill and reputation, Mr. Gross was also well-known as an advocate for PIMCO’s investors. He championed reasonable fees for PIMCO’s services and was vocally skeptical inside the firm of a select group of the younger executives’ desire to transform PIMCO into a high-risk, high-fee asset-management company that invested in riskier equities and leveraged real estate investments, as opposed to the stable bonds that built the firm’s reputation. As long as Mr. Gross remained at the company he founded, these younger executives were unable to transform PIMCO, increasing client risk and their own compensation. As a consequence, Mr. Gross became the target of a power struggle within PIMCO a struggle that eventually led to his wrongful and illegal ouster from the company he founded and a struggle where PIMCO wrongly and illegally denied Mr. Gross hundreds of millions of dollars in earned compensation.” A spokesperson for Pimco declined to comment. Gross’ attorney said in a statement that “all proceeds from the lawsuit will go to charity,” but declined to comment further.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...imco-for-hundreds-of-millions-over-his-ouster http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/08/bill-gross-files-major-lawsuit-against-pimco.html
Or as an attorney friend of mine used to say, "The hardest thing in the world is to keep pigs away from a trough."