Whether three-year-old DoubleLine continues to thrive will rest largely on the investment instructions that Gundlach gives to his senior portfolio managers. They all debate the broad investment categories in which DoubleLine will place its bets during monthly asset allocation meetings in the Warhol conference room, named after the flamboyant pop artist.
Gundlach acts as the final judge, signing off on the percentages of investments of particular assets for the firm’s funds. Once he settles on a strategy, Gundlach leaves it up to his managers to execute the trading, with oversight but little interference.
“He’s very much hands-off,” Padilla says. “Once that allocation is made, he says, ‘You manage that portion.’”
Stolen Artwork
Hands-off, though, isn’t normally the first description that comes to mind when discussing Gundlach. In mid-September, thieves robbed the money manager’s Santa Monica home in a quiet residential neighborhood, taking more than $10 million in artworks as well as his red 2010 Porsche Carrera 4S, wine and watches. The robbers also snatched two works by Gundlach’s late grandmother, Helen Fuchs, who was an amateur painter.
The money manager first offered $200,000 for tips leading to the recovery of his art and days later boosted the reward to $1.7 million. Santa Monica Police Department Sergeant Richard Lewis says the large sum of money was key to cracking the case, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation assisted on.
In late September, two suspects were arrested and all of the stolen art was recovered.
The cerebral Gundlach also gave investigators a tip for solving the crime. He says that while he was at home in his family room, it dawned on him that thieves would do a Google search using his grandmother’s name to find out more about the paintings and how much they might be worth.
Gundlach told the authorities that they should check the Internet to see who might have googled the name Helen Fuchs. He says exactly two such searches were executed: one by him and one by the thieves.
Gundlach says his Internet idea impressed investigators.
“The FBI,” he says, “thought it was brilliant.”
Bloomberg News
