Gundlach says never ordered TCW info downloading

Jeffrey Gundlach said he never told anyone on his staff to download data from his former employer, Trust Co of the West, or copy valuable trading information -- though he did briefly consider such an action.

"That stuff wouldn't do us any good anyway," the star bond manager said in a video deposition played in court on Thursday. "There was never an instruction to do anything."

Gundlach and TCW are pitched in a high-stakes trial with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. Gundlach, who calls himself "The Pope" and "The Godfather," is expected to take the stand on Thursday afternoon.

TCW fired Gundlach in late 2009 and sued him a month later, accusing him of stealing trade secrets, plotting to form a new company using TCW proprietary information, and gutting the firm of its entire mortgage-backed securities team.

Gundlach fired back with a counter-lawsuit, alleging that his former employer owed him hundreds of millions of dollars in back wages.

In the weeks following his termination, Gundlach went on to form his own asset management company, DoubleLine Capital, along with three of his co-defendants in the case.

Cris Santa Ana, a co-defendant and key ally of Gundlach, testified earlier in the trial that Gundlach ordered him to begin downloading TCW information in early September 2009.

Gundlach said in the deposition that he was "very, very angry" upon hearing that he might be fired that month.

"If they're going to fire me, we should have a list of how to call our clients, and maybe their legal documents," he recalled saying on the trading floor.

However, Gundlach said in the video that he rejected the idea "about thirty seconds later, and nothing like that ever happened again."

TCW is a unit of French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA).

The case in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, is Trust Co of the West v. Jeffrey Gundlach et al, BC429385.