Here’s a look at the life of Bill Gross.
Personal:
Birth date: April 13, 1944
Birthplace: Middleton, Ohio
Birth name: William Hunt Gross
Father: Sewell “Dutch” Gross, a steel company sales executive
Mother: Shirley Gross
Marriages: Sue (Frank) Gross (1985-present); Pamela Roberts Gross (1968-divorced, divorce date unavailable publicly)
Children: with Sue Frank: Nick; with Pamela Roberts: Jeff, Jennifer
Education: Duke University, B.A. in Psychology, 1966; University of California at Los Angeles, M.B.A, 1971
Military: US Navy, 1966-1969
Other Facts:
Billionaire, bond investor, philanthropist and avid stamp collector.
Founder, former co-chief investment officer and managing director of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest mutual funds. Under Gross, PIMCO became the world’s largest bond fund manager.
Timeline:
1954 – The Gross family relocates from Middleton, Ohio, to San Francisco.
1966 – While recuperating from injuries suffered in a serious car accident, Gross teaches himself to count cards in blackjack. After college graduation, he turns $200 into $10,000 in four months.
1971 – Is hired as a junior bond analyst for Pacific Mutual Insurance Company.
1971 – PIMCO, Pacific Investment Management Company, is formed as a division of Pacific Mutual with colleagues William Podlich and James F. Muzzy.
1985 – PIMCO formally splits from Pacific Mutual.
2003 – Founds the William and Sue Gross Family Foundation, through which millions of dollars are donated to universities, hospitals and organizations.
2005 – Gross and his wife, Sue, give $23.5 million to Duke University for undergraduate and medical school students and for the Fuqua School of Business.
2006 – Donates $10 million to the University of California at Irvine for stem cell research and to help build a new research lab. The lab opens in 2010 and is named in their honor, Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center.
2007 – A stamp collector since childhood, Gross auctions his collection of British stamps for $9.1 million and donates the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders.
2009 – Donates $8 million for the establishment of a stamp gallery at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, DC. The gallery is named in his honor, the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, and will open in September 2013.
September 2014 – Gross unexpectedly resigns from PIMCO to join Janus Capital Group, where he manages the Janus Unconstrained Bond Fund.
July 1, 2015 – The Smithsonian Institution includes Gross’s old Bloomberg keyboard in its American Enterprise exhibition at the National Museum of American History. The keyboard, used by Gross during the 1990s and 2000s, has function keys for accessing real-time financial information.
October 8, 2015 – Gross sues former employer PIMCO for hundreds of millions of dollars, alleging he was wrongfully ousted from the firm as part of a vast conspiracy. The lawsuit claims a “cabal” of PIMCO executives driven by a “lust for power, greed” and self-interest plotted for Gross’s demise.
March 2017 – Number 814 on the Forbes annual list of the world’s billionaires, with a net worth of $2.5 billion.
