Quips in high demand

If you started watching CNBC these days because you’re worried about the stock market chipping away at your 401K, chances are you’ve seen a lot of Bill Gross lately.

Yes, a lot of people want to know what Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of bond fund giant Pimco in Newport Beach, thinks about the economy.

After all, Gross and his Pimco colleagues recognized early on — even during the heady days of the rising housing values — that the sub-prime market would torpedo a superheated market. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, freezing credit colder than the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Gross had this to say to the Los Angeles Times:

“Figuratively, institutions are putting money in a mattress.”

It’s that gift for a glib layman’s analogy that has Gross in such high demand from the media.

“He’s a very, very smart man, therefore, his opinions are very meaningful to investors and to the lay person who is just trying to understand what’s going on,” said Poorvi Parekh, director of manager research at Canterbury Consulting in Newport Beach. “And he’s certainly not shy about being on TV.”

Gross told the Washington Post in March that it became apparent two years ago to Pimco that something was not right with the housing market.

“It became obvious with all the funny-money mortgages being created that something was amiss,” he told the Post.

So the company assigned 10 of the company’s credit analysts to various cities across the country to pretend they were buying a home and note the trends. “So we were the first ones to know that subprimes were dangerous, and we stayed away from them entirely.”

“There were other fixed-income managers who were more defensive relative to housing and real estate because they were concerned about subprime, but Bill Gross was more outspoken about it,” Parekh said.

Gross, who focuses mostly on bonds, is one of the world’s most prominent mutual fund managers. Pimco’s Total Return fund, which he manages, is the biggest bond fund and fifth largest mutual fund. The Total Return fund has $130 billion in it. Pimco manages $800 billion total.

He’s listed as the 227th richest person in the country, and 897th richest in the world, according to Forbes. His net worth is estimated at $2 billion. Not bad for a guy from Ohio who took $200 in 1966 in Vegas and used his card-shark skills to earn $10,000, enough to finance his MBA at UCLA. Those are gaudy accomplishments, but when it comes to philanthropy, Bill and his wife, Sue Gross, are far more modest.

“Bill’s a pretty humble, quiet guy. He doesn’t look for the limelight at all,” said Ron Guziak, executive director of the Hoag Hospital Foundation, who worked with the couple when they donated $20 million to the hospital in 2005.

The “transformative” gift for the hospital’s Women’s Pavilion was the biggest gift in Hoag’s history and helped support its largest expansion. The couple also gave $10 million to UC Irvine for the university’s stem cell research center, which is named after them. And they have given $3 million to Sage Hill School in Newport Coast to establish a fund for scholarships for kids who couldn’t afford private school. The couple also sponsors the annual Orange County Teacher of the Year awards.

Other recent charitable contributions include:

• Selling his British stamp collection for $9.1 million to benefit Doctors Without Borders

• Selling his Scandinavian stamp collection in May for $1.5 million to benefit Millennium Village Projects of Africa; then selling his British Empire stamp collection in October for $1.5 million to benefit the same organization.

When it comes to philanthropy, “he lets the gift speak for itself,” Guziak said.