Howard Marks has made $900 million from his investment in 'Bond King' Jeff Gundlach
According to Bloomberg, Oaktree Capital Group Chairman Marks' initial $20 million investment in Gundlach's DoubleLine Capital has increased to around $900 million, a more than 4,000% appreciation.
Gundlach started the firm in 2009 after being fired as Chief Investment Officer of TCW, where both he and Marks worked together in the 1980s and early 1990s.
At the time of the funds' launch Marks took a one-fifth stake in DoubleLine and since then Gundlach has grown DoubleLine's value to around $85 billion in just 6 years.
Gundlach's flagship Total Return Bond Fund beat out 99% of its peers, Bloomberg notes.
Bloomberg added that according to a recent Wells Fargo report about 13% of Oaktree's stock price is attributable to DoubleLine. Based on that number, the total value of Marks' investment is $890 million.
"Well first of all we had no reason to expect that it would go as well as it did," Marks told Bloomberg TV's Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin.
Marks added: "But what I did know is that I knew that Jeff reported to me in my last [job] at TCW, my previous employer before we formed Oaktree. So I knew the man. I knew how smart he was. I knew his partner Phil Barach. I knew how, what a great team they were. And I believed that they would be successful."
And how.