How it started
Foundational years (1998–2017)
Fortress Investment Group LLC was founded in 1998 in New York City as a private equity firm in 1998 by Wesley R. Edens, a former partner at BlackRock; Rob Kauffman, a managing director at UBS; Randal A. Nardone, also a managing director at UBS; Michael Novogratz, a former partner at Goldman Sachs; and Pete Briger, also a former partner at Goldman Sachs. The firm quickly expanded into hedge funds, real estate-related investments and debt securities, with Michael Novogratz leading the hedge fund strategy and Peter Briger overseeing the credit and real estate-related investments.
Fortress completed its initial public offering on February 8, 2007, with Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers underwriting the IPO.
When Fortress launched on the NYSE on February 9, 2007, it was the first large private equity firm in the United States to be traded publicly. Fortress and its principals were subsequently featured in an April 2009 Vanity Fair article on the adverse economic conditions facing hedge funds.
In 2014, Fortress was named "Hedge Fund Manager of the Year" by Institutional Investor and "Management Firm of the Year" by HFMWeek. Fortress was previously recognized by Institutional Investor as “Discretionary Macro-Focused Hedge Fund of the Year” for 2012, and “Credit-Focused Fund of the Year” for both 2011 and 2010.
On October 13, 2015, the company announced that its $2.3 billion Macro Fund was to close down and would distribute its assets to investors. This development came after its co-CIOs Jeff Feig and Michael Novogratz stepped down from the fund and retired from the firm, respectively.
From Wikipedia’s article on Fortress Investment Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2