City profiles
Bill Gross During a storming five decades at Pimco, the maverick Bill Gross “racked up one of the longest winning streaks of any money manager” and was credited with transforming bond investment, said Bloomberg. “A gambler before he became an investor” (he put himself through college on his blackjack winnings), Gross established himself as “a fixed-income whizz”, aided by a historic bond bull market. But he’s “leaving the stage after a tough final chapter”. After an explosive row at Pimco, he joined Janus in 2014 – but never really found his mojo. At Janus, Gross, 74, maintained his “trademark eccentric punditry”, said Lex in the FT. In a dispatch last year, ostensibly about the US tenyear Treasury yield, he “name-dropped” Moses, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot.
Angela Ahrendts
“I went to Apple because I felt it was a calling to one of the greatest companies on the planet,” Angela Ahrendts told Vogue Business last month. But in a “shock” decision, the former Burberry fashion queen – brought in five years ago to revitalise Apple’s retail division – has announced her departure, said The Times. Once “widely tipped to succeed Tim Cook” as the tech giant’s next CEO, Ahrendts, 58, is credited with transforming Apple stores into “gathering places”. In 2017, she earned $24.2m to Cook’s $12.8m. But her decision to seek pastures new coincides with lacklustre iphones sales. “She’s a retailing legend,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. But “it hasn’t all been roses in Cupertino lately”.