It’s a cold, damp October morning in downtown San Francisco. Outside the Federal Reserve Bank building, a group of about 20 protesters huddles. Part of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters are a reaction to the worsening economic malaise in the U.S. and the role the banking industry played in creating it. Unclear in their demands, the protesters are very specific in the targets of their outrage: the bankers, traders, hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives still getting rich while so many others are struggling.
One block away, 42 stories up, surrounded by fog so dense that it is all but impossible to see across the street, a slightly rumpled Peter Briger Jr. sits slouched at his desk, peering through metal-rimmed glasses at his Bloomberg terminal. On a clear day Briger can see the Golden Gate Bridge from his window, but otherwise the corner office is a near replica of the one he left in New York a few months earlier, when he relocated to the West Coast. The Fortress Investment Group co-chairman prefers it that way. As co-CIO of the firm’s $11.8 billion credit business, he tries to avoid unwanted distractions that might prevent him from doing what he does best — make money.
It is a safe bet that not a single one of the protesters would recognize Briger for what he is: a titan of finance. The former Goldman Sachs Group proprietary trader, who co-founded that firm’s extremely profitable Special Situations Group in 1998, joined Fortress in 2002 and launched its Drawbridge Special Opportunities funds. Five years later, when he and his partners took Fortress public — marking the first listing by a significant alternative-investment firm in the U.S. — Briger became a billionaire. His specialty: investing in distressed debt and beaten-down loans that no one else wants or that are being dumped by sellers under financial duress. ....