Here’s the big number: $290 million. That was Bill Gross’s bonus for the year.
That breaks down to an equivalent of $794,520 a day. For even more context, Gross raked in a sum nearly equal to the base salaries of the next 20 publicly held finance company CEOs combined. That includes BlackRock (BLK), American Express (AXP) and Goldman Sachs (GS).
Gross’s take-home pay, while massive, is only a portion of the almost $1.5 billion that Pacific Investment Management Co., popularly known as PIMCO, meted out for its 2013 bonuses, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg View’s Barry Ritholtz.
Other big winners last year include Mohamed El-Erian, who received a $230 million bonus. El-Erian resigned from Gross’s Total Return Fund in March, shocking much of the investment world. El-Erian is a Coins2Day contributor.
In response to Ritholtz’s findings, a PIMCO spokesperson said the figures provided to Bloomberg weren’t correct.
“PIMCO does not comment on compensation,” said the spokesperson in an emailed response. “For more than three decades, PIMCO’s Managing Directors have maintained a substantial interest in the firm, currently 30% of profits and this provides an important means to attract and retain the best investment talent to serve our clients.”
PIMCO is a historically closed-lipped organization, and any bonus payment or other employee benefits have not been publicly disclosed by the company.
The sums are not shocking for the investment world, where multi-million bonuses are common. What is surprising is the massively high bonus in context of Gross’s funds performance, which had underperformed during that period. Over 16 months through August, there was about $68 million in total outflows from the Total Return Fund.
Gross left PIMCO in September and is now manager of Janus Capital Group’s (JNS) Unconstrained Bond Fund.