Who

An expert in distressed securities, Matlin is the CEO of MatlinPatterson Global Advisors, a private equity firm with $9 billion under management. He's one of the legends in the field.

Backstory

A Wharton grad and UCLA-trained lawyer, Matlin cut his teeth at Merrion Group, before moving to Credit Suisse First Boston in 1994 to head up their distressed securities group. Eight years later, he went off on his own, spinning out his $2.2 billion fund as a separate company with Credit Suisse as one of the fund's primary investors. These days Matlin has two partners —Mark Patterson and Lap Chan—and the fund manages more than $9 billion, including $5 billion raised in 2007 as part of a third fund. Along with Marty Whitman, Steve Feinberg and Wilbur Ross, Matlin is one of the most prominent distressed investors in the country.

Of note

Matlin is a man who likes companies with sagging balance sheets. If it's a good company at the core—albeit one that's saddled with burdensome debt—he'll buy up distressed bonds for pennies on the dollar with the aim of gaining control. It's a strategy that made his firm a bundle back in 2002 when Matlin picked up the bonds of telecom train wreck WorldCom: He sunk more than $300 million to become one of the company's largest bondholders. Although his bid to take over the company with Rudy Giuliani was eventually derailed, Matlin made a mint following WorldCom's sale to Verizon. And he's since made similar gambles on companies like the chemical maker Huntsman Group and the power generation firm NRG Energy.

Matlin's strategies don't always work out, of course. One particularly stinging defeat was a $30 million bet he made on a home nursing company called Healthcor in 1999: When an accounting fraud problem was uncovered (the company was billing Medicare for patients who had already died), Matlin lost his entire investment. One more recent money-loser for MatlinPatterson was ATA Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008. But the current market environment has provided Matlin with a fresh crop of targets. His investment in Thornburg Mortgage, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, has been one of the firm's biggest losers in recent memory.

Campaign trail

Despite their thwarted bid to go into business together, Matlin remains tight with the former mayor. Both he and his wife were big supporters of Giuliani's ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign.

Personal

David's wife, Lisa Matlin, is a co-owner of Blue Tree, a boutique on Madison Avenue. Her partner in the venture is Phoebe Cates, the wife of actor Kevin Kline. The Matlins live on Park Avenue in the same apartment building as Henry Kravis and former Chanel chief Arie Kopelman.