Former TCW bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach fired back at his old employer on Wednesday, charging the firm owed him and his team as much as $1.25 billion under a 2007 “oral agreement.”

In a response to TCW’s Jan. 7 lawsuit against him, Gundlach said he was wrongfully dismissed and he denied stealing any of the firm’s intellectual property. Los Angeles-based TCW, a unit of French bank Societe Generale fired Gundlach in December, saying he was about to quit and start a competing firm.

Gundlach, who was named Morningstar’s bond fund manager of the year in 2006, worked at TCW for more than 24 years and oversaw about $65 billion of the firm’s $110 billion of assets when he was fired on Dec. 4. Less than two weeks later, he opened a new firm, DoubleLine Capital LP, and was joined by more than half of the fixed-income team he oversaw at TCW.

Gundlach alleges in the response that he was fired because TCW wanted to avoid paying him and his team some $600 million to $1.25 billion in performance fees on mortgage investment funds set up in 2007.

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