Welcome to another episode of Goldman Sachs Exchanges, great investors. I'm Allison Mass, chairman of

Investment Banking in Goldman Sachs's Global Banking and Markets Division and your host for this episode.

Today, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Jeff Aronson, the co-founder and managing

principle of Centerbridge Partners.

Centerbridge manages over $42 billion in assets across private equity, private credit,

and real estate strategies.

I'm excited to hear how Jeff built this business and how he's navigated the opportunities

and challenges that face

private investment managers today.

So Jeff, it's a pleasure to have you on great investors.

And I'm happy to be here.

Awesome.

So you started your career as a lawyer, and I want to go way back. When and why did you transition

into finance? Yeah, I started my career as a lawyer, not because I knew what a lawyer did,

but because it sounded good. It sounded good. And I enjoyed law school. I went to work at a big

Wall Street law firm. It wasn't for me. It was not for me.

What law firm did you work for? It was struck and struck and living. And it's no longer. It's no longer.

And I spent two and a half years doing that. And I found my way into the legal department of a small

investment bank. It was called LF. Rothschild Unterberg-Tobin. And my job, as a very young lawyer,

was to advise the people who are managing the firm's proprietary capital. Two gentlemen,

John Angelo and Michael Gordon. And this was, gosh, probably 1986. So I did that, and I really

enjoyed working with them. And then what happened is the stock market crash in 1987. And L.F. Rothschild went bankrupt. I remember that.

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