Who

Briger is the president of Fortress Investment Group, the first US-based private equity/hedge fund to sell shares to the public.

Backstory

Briger attended Princeton and earned an MBA from Wharton before joining Goldman Sachs. He spent 15 years at the firm, serving as co-head of the fixed income principal investments group and the Asian distressed debt business, eventually making partner in 1996. Two years later, Briger teamed up with Wesley Edens, Robert Kauffman and Randall Nardone to found Fortress, later recruiting fellow Goldman alum Mike Novogratz to join the team.

The founders took Wall Street by surprise in 2006 when they announced plans to go public, marking the first time a private equity firm had sought to tap into the public markets. In February 2007, shortly after selling a minority interest to Japanese investment firm Nomura for $890 million, Fortress raked in $600 million in the IPO, valuing the stake held by its principals at $9.7 billion. The move helped set off the wave of hedge fund and private equity firms that soon followed suit, including Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson's Blackstone and Dan Och's Och-Ziff Capital Management. These days Fortress has some $43 billion in assets under management, spread across several private equity and hedge funds. (Briger himself oversees the company's Drawbridge Specialty Opportunities Fund.) Unfortunately, the meltdown in the credit markets has pummeled Fortress's returns as well as its stock price.

Keeping score

Forbes estimated Briger's worth at $1.5 billion in 2007.

Personal

Briger's wife, Devon, is an American Ballet Theatre trustee. The couple lives on Central Park West, in the same building as architect Robert A.M. Stern, and spends vacations at a home in Kailua Kona, Hawaii, which they purchased for $1.9 million in 1999. They also have a home in East Hampton, which Briger purchased for $18 million in 2007.