Bill Gross founded Pacific Investment Management Company in 1971 and built it into one of the world's largest fixed income managers. The company has more than $750bn of assets under management and is now an independent unit of Allianz, the German financial services group, which bought the bond manager in 2000.

The 63-year-old author of Everything You've Heard About Investing is Wrong , Mr Gross is Pimco's managing director and chief investment officer. He recently hired Alan Greenspan as a consultant and persuaded Mohamed El-Erian to leave the $35bn Harvard endowment fund after 18 months in the job and return to Pimco.