Last Thursday, Bill Gross ('71) and Larry Fink ('76) joined together in conversation with Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker. The program airs tonight on Bloomberg TV at 7pm PT / 10pm ET.
Here is a preview of tonight's program, the two talking about Japan.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy feature on the two, detailing their rise to the top of the financial world and their shared, California roots. Headlined "The rise of the bond barons" and authored by Nathaniel Popper and Walter Hamilton. Here's a sample:
The gregarious Fink, 59, and the more reserved Gross, 67, have very different personalities and run very different companies. Fink's asset management company, based in New York, has a much broader business model than Gross' more focused operation in Newport Beach, but their ascension to the top of the bond world has some striking parallels.
Both men created upstart behemoths in a financial industry that tends to favor experience. Gross was one of Fink's first big clients when he began trading bonds, and Fink used Gross as an advisor when BlackRock launched in 1989.
More strikingly, before starting their companies, they were both free-spirited California boys — Gross from the Bay Area, Fink in the San Fernando Valley. And the business training they received came not from some ivy-cloaked East Coast academic institution but at the less aristocratic business school atUCLA. They graduated within five years of each other.
"Maybe the laid-back philosophy allows you to think longer term," Fink said, only half in jest, during a recent interview at his New York office.
(Photo Courtesy Bloomberg, via L.A. Times)
In the article, their relationship -- friendly, but also rivals -- is illuminated:
Later, when Fink went off to start his current company, he went out to California with his co-founder, Ralph Schlosstein, to get Gross' advice on creating a bond investing firm.
"One would normally think that No. 1 and No. 2. would be highly competitive and hate each other," said Schlosstein, who has since gone on to lead Evercore Partners. "But in fact the relationship was always one of friendly competition and very high respect."
That's not to say, however, that there's no rivalry.
"It would be unrealistic to think that we didn't have our eyes on BlackRock and they didn't have their eyes on us," Gross said in an interview. "We're out for their customers and they're out for ours."
Read the entire L.A. Times story on Larry Fink and Bill Gross here.
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