Keep pulling the thread on Jeff Aronson.
Centerbridge Partners' core organizational design involves a single investment team per industry vertical that invests across the entire capital structure, which the firm considers its single biggest differentiator.
Prior to founding Centerbridge, Angelo Gordon and Blackstone's private equity team partnered on deals under the name "Project Spock," combining their respective credit and equity expertise.
Post-GFC, Centerbridge Partners' opportunistic credit business evolved from focusing on secondary markets and total return to a model where over half the business is now primary origination of high-yield loans.
Jeff Aronson states that current investment grade credit spreads are tighter than pre-GFC levels and recently reached their tightest point since before the Long-Term Capital Management crisis in the late 1990s.
Jeff Aronson believes the current market is in a "greed mode" characterized by complacency, a focus on capital deployment over risk, and a rise in frauds, which are all signs of late-cycle behavior.
Centerbridge Partners' growth strategy is to expand only into adjacent business lines that enhance its existing franchise, rather than pursuing topical investment trends where it lacks an edge.
Jeff Aronson has an ambition for Centerbridge Partners to double its assets under management over the next five years.
Jeff Aronson is concerned that as alternative investments become mainstream, the influx of capital, particularly from wealth channels, will depress returns and make outperformance more difficult.
Angelo Gordon's real estate business originated from its credit strategy by investing in real estate credit opportunities during the recession and savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s.
Jeff Aronson believes that credit investors fundamentally do not understand companies as well as private equity investors because they are not owners of the businesses.
Blackstone's financial restructuring advisory business, which was run by Art Newman, was spun out approximately 10 years ago and became PJT Partners.
Centerbridge Partners' first fund, raised in spring 2006, was a private equity fund designed to execute both traditional buyouts and distress-for-control transactions.