I wasn’t sure whether to post this here or in the book thread or in the Elon Musk thread where the topic originally came up, but the new Bill Gross biography–The Bond King–kind of sucks.
There are a few reasons why it kind of sucks, and I thought I’d lay them out:
- There isn’t much salacious detail about crazy behavior like you saw in Liar’s Poker or a lot of other books. Only at the very, very end do you get some stories about Bill Gross being absolutely nutso to his neighbors and his soon-to-be-ex-wife. But as far as life at Pimco, the story seems fairly clear that Gross was stubborn and introverted and didn’t care too much about pissing off other people. But there weren’t any really vivid illustrations. More like, “Person A wanted to expand into equities, and Gross told him brusquely that it was a really dumb idea.”
One example is in the description of Neel Kashkari, who joined Pimco after running TARP. In an effort to illustrate how COMPLETELY different Kashkari was from other Pimco management, the book describes this event:
When walking up to the building, a more junior person always held the door for more senior people, to allow them to walk frictionless and first into the capacious lobby. The senior people took this as expected, a function of the natural order; usually they’d pass without a nod or other acknowledgement.
Not Kashkari. One day, this lower-ranking executive recalls seeing Kashkari approach the building behind him, and the man of lower rank held the door as expected. Kashkari sped up and, upon walking in, turned his head and made eye contact.
He said, “Thanks.”
The executive froze in shock. This guy will never make it here, he thought.
I think I actually burst out laughing when I read that. Not that Kashkari held the door for other people - he just said thanks to someone.
Another sick burn:
The Wall Street Journal published a story on the showdown between Gross and El-Erian, which this book describes as follows:
The story detailed confrontations that seemed indisputably, unspinnably bad. […] That he didn’t like dissent when he’d made up his mind about an investment–arguably a rigidity that could inhibit achieving the best performance. As an example, the Journal cited a senior investment manager who thought a bond in Gross’s fund was expensive.
“Okay, buy me more of it,” Gross had reportedly replied, apparently just to be a dick.
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Some of the reviews on Amazon characterize this as a hit piece on Gross, which is absolutely wrong - it’s evident that Gross was a primary source and had a big influence on how he’s portrayed in this book. So if you’re looking for an unauthorized true story of Gross, this isn’t really it. Even the stories that make Gross look somewhat bad have kind of a halo on them, presumably because he’s the one recounting them.
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Related to the prior point, the author clearly spent a lot of time interviewing people. But one of the critical people who very clearly was not interviewed was co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian. The reason I know he wasn’t interviewed is that there are constant footnotes where El-Erian’s lawyer disputes facts. Here’s one of the dumbest:
In 2010, Gross was named Morningstar’s Fixed Income Manager of the Decade. Pimco/El-Erian wanted to organize a surprise party in recognition, but the problem was that Gross came in to the office so early (typically at 5am or so) that it would be hard to set the party up in advance to successfully surprise him. Here’s how the chapter describes that process:
"El-Erian had scoured Orange County for a bakery willing to deliver a cake at 4:45 A.M. It was no easy feat, but he finally found one that would do the job.*
[then, at the bottom of the page]:
*“Dr. El-Erian placed an order consistent with the bakery’s operating hours,” his lawyer says.
Other footnotes include El-Erian’s lawyer pointing out that El-Erian typically flew commercial rather than taking advantage of the company’s NetJets accout.
So it’s kind of a boring behind-the-scenes story if you’re interested in tabloid-type stuff. But it’s also very unsatisfying if you want details about trades! (I’ve got a meeting now, but will follow up with a couple of baffling descriptions.)