Hail the asset raising king Bill Gross.
While much professional attention is paid to Bill Gross and his bond investing and derivatives trading skills, it is the ability of Gross to raise assets that is behind much of his success. This was apparent Thursday as Janus Capital Group Inc (NYSE:JNS) announced that George Soros would be providing gross $500 million for the “humbled” former bond king to invest.
Quantum Partners invested $500,000 for Bill Gross to manage
Janus announced that Quantum Partners LP, managed by Soros Fund Management LLC, has invested $500,000 for Bill Gross to manage in a separate account “pursuant to a strategy similar to that of the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.”
Bill Gross, naturally, was pleased to be supported by a fellow fund luminary such as Soros.
“I & my team will manage your new unconstrained strategic acct. 24h/day,” Bill Gross said today on Janus’s Twitter account. “An honor to be chosen & an honor to be earned as well.”
Jennifer Ablan of Reuters, tweeted more details about Gross and Soros.
Soros Fund Management reached out to Bill Gross after he resigned from Pimco @Reuters @georgesoros
— Jennifer Ablan (@jennablan) November 20, 2014
Huge boost for Bill Gross: Soros Fund Management’s CIO Scott Bessent met with Gross, adding that the fund considers Gross a legend @Reuters
— Jennifer Ablan (@jennablan) November 20, 2014
Bill Gross triples AUM at Janus
Bill Gross has been quite the asset gatherer for Janus. When he came over he nearly tripled the assets under management in the Janus Unconstrained fund, as $364 million piled in after it was announced he was taking over, moving from Pimco. The fund now stands at $442.9 million as of Oct. 31, according to Bloomberg data.
Soros Fund Management is a family office, a private investment vehicle that manages the assets of its sole client, George Soros. The billionaire investor, worth an estimated $24 billion, has had a colorful investing career.
Perhaps his most famous investment was one credited with “breaking the Bank of England.”
In the fall of 1992, Soros had been building a significant short position in pounds sterling, believing that an unfavorable position had occurred when the United Kingdom joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Soros reasoned the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, particularly given the UK’s inflation rate that was triple that of German inflation. Then on on September 16, 1992, known as Black Wednesday, Soros’ fund sold more than 10 billion pounds on foreign exchange markets, a bet that sent the currency tumbling. The UK eventually was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which devalued the pound. Soros’s profit on the sale of the UK currency was estimated at over 1 billion pounds. In the aftermath, the UK government officially estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at 3.4 billion pounds.
His investment in Bill Gross might not reach the same level of acclaim, but only time will tell.
