DealBook: Who Won and Lost the Gundlach-TCW Face-Off?

Pool photo by Reuters VideoJeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital in a Los Angeles courtroom in August.

It looked like a war, sounded like a war, felt at times like a war.

But in the end, the long, drawn-out legal battle between Jeffrey E. Gundlach, the colorful mutual fund maven, and his former firm, Trust Company of the West, may have been nothing more than a white-collar tempest in a teapot.

Mr. Gundlach, a fixed-income investor who rose to prominence as the chief investment officer at TCW, as Trust Company of the West is known, was fired by the firm in 2009. Shortly afterward, TCW sued Mr. Gundlach, who is known in certain circles as “the bond king,” and three of his associates, accusing them of stealing trade secrets and plotting to set up a competing firm, DoubleLine Capital.

What could have been a run-of-the-mill employment dispute blossomed into a full-blown ordeal, however, when Mr. Gundlach counter-sued TCW, alleging that the firm owed him and his associates hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid fees.

So began the civil case that captivated the world of mutual funds – a world where, let’s be honest, the bar for captivation is relatively low.

In September, after a six-week trial that involved dozens of witnesses, a jury found that Mr. Gundlach and his associates had breached their fiduciary duty and had misappropriated trade secrets, though it awarded Mr. Gundlach $66.7 million in damages in the countersuit, while awarding no damages to TCW.

On Thursday, that mixed verdict got even more complicated, when both parties agreed to settle their claims out of court.

That settlement, the terms of which are confidential (both TCW and DoubleLine declined to elaborate on the details), will put to rest both TCW’s suit against Mr. Gundlach and vice versa, marking an end to one of the oddest legal face-offs of the year.

So, you may be asking, who won and lost L’Affaire Gundlach? Well, without knowing the terms of the settlement, let us try to help separate the wheat from the chaff.
 

The Winners

Lawyers: The law firms representing Mr. Gundlach and TCW – Munger Tolles Olson and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Sullivan, respectively – will each walk away from the case with millions of dollars in fees, even though the case ended in an out-of-court settlement. Those millions should buy a lot of Hawaiian shirts.

Mr. Gundlach: While testifying at his own trial, Mr. Gundlach got to detail, for admirers and skeptical alike, the story of his improbable rise to the upper echelons of fixed-income investing. From his tenure in a rock band after college to his decision, inspired by an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” to become an investor, Mr. Gundlach’s colorful biography should pique the attention of book publishers and documentarians.

DoubleLine and TCW: Executives at both DoubleLine, Mr. Gundlach’s new firm, and TCW are likely both breathing a sigh of relief after settling their two-year tie-up. DoubleLine, whose assets have zoomed to about $20 billion this year from $7 billion last year, can now focus its full energies on beating the markets. And at TCW, a settlement will allow the team from Metropolitan West Asset Management, which it acquired to replace Mr. Gundlach’s team, to escape the bond king’s shadow at last.

Nicknames: There was no shortage of good nicknames revealed during the trial between Mr. Gundlach and TCW. Among them: “the Pope,” “the Godfather” (both of which Mr. Gundlach called himself), “the B-team” (which Mr. Gundlach called Philip A. Barach, his co-manager), “dumb and dumber” (which Mr. Gundlach used to refer to Marc I. Stern and Robert A. Day, TCW’s chief executive and founder), and “Autobot,” a nickname given to Jeffrey Mayberry, who worked with Mr. Gundlach at TCW, by Rachel Cody, a co-worker. (The name referred to the protagonist of the “Transformers” franchise.)

Marfa, Tex.: The trial between Mr. Gundlach and TCW was full of colorful tidbits, but none as interesting as an all-expenses-paid private jet trip taken by Mr. Gundlach and several TCW co-workers in 2009 to Marfa, Tex. There, TCW’s lawyers said, Mr. Gundlach indulged his art obsession by visiting the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum founded by Donald Judd. The trip, which TCW’s lawyers attempted to use to prove that Mr. Gundlach had been secretly plotting to take his team with him for months before he was fired, wound up as free publicity for the Chinati Foundation and the rest of Marfa, a town of approximately 2,000 residents near the Mexican border.

Judge Carl J. West: a baronial figure with a white mustache, Judge West of the Los Angeles County Superior Court presided with gusto over a six-week trial that seemed, at times, more like a middle school grudge match. According to reports, Judge West is retiring from the bench next year, making the Gundlach/TCW trial a fitting feather in the cap of a long and by all counts successful judicial career.

The Losers

 
Société Générale: the French bank bought a controlling stake in TCW in 2001, but may regret doing so now that the firm has become known, outside fixed-income circles, just as much for its lawsuits as its returns. Under pressure to raise capital and sell off non-core assets to cope with the hazards of the European debt crisis, Societe Generale has even been rumored to be shopping TCW for a potential sale. (The bank has denied it plans to sell the firm.)

Humility: Mr. Gundlach is many things, but meek is not one of them. (“How many other people have been able to put together a $14 billion asset management company in two years in the history of the industry? Zero,” he crowed to DealBook earlier this year.) And experts say that the egos involved in the Gundlach/TCW case may have held off a settlement for longer than necessary.

“There was a lot of money on the table,” Jill E. Fisch, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told DealBook on Friday. “Obviously, the fact that someone wanted to take it to trial means that egos, and not just dollars, were at stake.”

Courtroom voyeurs: When news that Mr. Gundlach’s case was going to trial surfaced, some finance watchers perked up. Among the accusations leveled against Mr. Gundlach by TCW were claims that he had kept a secret stash of pornography and drugs in his office. But in July, before a jury could hear about these claims, Judge West ruled that the lurid evidence would not be admitted in court, saying that it was immaterial to the case.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bbac67465593aea1eb4c5f2b38c4bbed