I concur about the value to Janus being overrated. If I may slow down a bit here, and try to be a little more analytic:
Gross does have an outstanding
10 year and longer record, which various reports have pointed out. Whatever the management complaints have been, he did build a solid company, and I expect the PIMCO funds to perform reasonably well going forward as a result.
Grundlach did way better than TGLMX when he first left TCW, though over the past three years he has not done quite as well. In other words, TCW has held its own. But TCW had to buy MetWest to get that performance - too many people left TCW. I'm not expecting PIMCO people to leave and follow Gross.
Another analog, ironically enough, is Tom Marsico. Janus did just fine without him for about three years, at least until the .com bubble burst. So I suppose it's hard to tell how much credit to attribute to the organization, and how much to the manager.
I've focused on Gross' five year performance for a few reasons - it shows that his performance (to the extent that the PIMCO funds reflect his management) is variable and subject to long spells of mediocrity.
More important is that Gross has been promoting the New Normal (and now the New Neutral) for approximately five years (since May 2009). In other words, Gross has been saying that "this time is different". He's not done well throughout his self-declared new period, even though he's done well for many years before.
Either he's right, and we should be judging him based on how he handles this new investing environment, or he's wrong, which does not bode well for someone who invests on macro trends.
While he has been in the business for four decades, he didn't start managing retail funds (actually institution class funds) until
1987, well past the era of rising rates. So for him (and for nearly all managers) this time
is different. I haven't been able to find any data on his involvement with separate accounts prior to that.
The more I think about his star value to Janus, the more I wonder about that as well. He's leaving a fund where people have been
selling off for 16 straight months. I suppose that means that 3/4 of the money was still betting on him, or it could simply be sticky money that will stay with PIMCO because of inertia. And the $70B or so that flowed out is not likely to jump in with him at Janus.
Janus gets tons of free PR. Beyond that, I'm not sure what value they're getting in the long term.
