YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Aronson

lines on the record: 75
first: 2025-08-19
most recent: 2025-08-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, attributes, it's the same thing that you folks look for, people who are smart and hardworking and driven. I want people who are curious, really intellectually curious. I think great investors would also be great investigative journalists. So you're always looking and looking under a rock and asking a question. And yet to be a great listener and then posing the question a different way and see what types of answers you get, people who are contrarian. Again, I don't really interview young people anymore, but I used to do it this way. So pretend I'm interviewing you. So, Allison, do you have a lot of friends in the buy side?”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think with people, you almost have to, in terms of decision making, you have to be ruthless, but in terms of carrying it out, you have to be empathetic.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we let it go. And that was a mistake. And we made some mistakes as a result. So for me, that was the biggest learning is, you know, don't, again, you have to look at the world. You have to look at people as well dispassionately. In fact, that their people is on the one hand hard. You develop relationships. But we have a business to run and can't forget that.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Zer Zero. And so what happened, we brought again, it's a startup. So I also know why people don't invest in first time funds. Because it's hard. It's hard to build an organization that's cohesive with a culture and communicative and collaborative and all those good things. We hired people and sometimes it's like invest things. Sometimes you just get that twitch. You know, you know it's not right. And Mark and I, we had that twitch with certain people. We didn't do anything about it.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as I think about it now, I never ask myself once, what's the probability of hiring 30 A people in a row? I never thought about it. And the probability of that is...”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different LPs though, right? There were a couple of LPs who overlap, but very few did. And so we were able to start with a fair amount of capital. So we weren't struggling. Try to raise money, which is typical in startups. The hard thing about it, particularly in retrospect, I mean we all know it's people business. I mean, the business, what we do, what all firms like us do is really complicated at its core. It's pretty simple. It's our people and our client's capital. That's it. And the clients were either going to choose to invest with you or not, and you do a good job for them and they will, and they trust you. That's all good. But that's their decision. So what can we do as people? As an investor, I like to think about probabilities because there is no certainty in investing, zero certainty. Sometimes I think investors try to fool themselves with certainty and beautiful models and everything looks great. And, you know, when a young analyst gives me a model, which I couldn't do in a million years, I say, and jokingly in a nice way, the only thing I know about your model for sure is that it's wrong.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what we did is we developed a partnership. The name of the project at both firms was called Project Spock, for where no man had gone before. And the idea simply was that we would pool our intellectual capital, that we would look at a company and Mark and his team, their alpha was on the left-hand side of the balance sheet, and our alpha was on the right-hand side of the balance sheet. And we were 50-50 just on a handshake. And we looked at everything together. Did you invest in a number of things together? Oh, yeah. We did. And it was hugely successful.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As Mark would tell the story, he went to art, his partner at Blackstone, and said, I'm interested in credit, but it's not my thing. And Art said, you know, I've got someone for you. You should meet Jeff. And I first met Mark, and I'm thinking, you know, very nice guy, but we're literally on different sides of the balance sheet.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Mark was interested in credit. And at that point, Blackstone had a financial restructuring advisory business run by a guy named Art Newman, who was like an icon of the industry.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll give you a second on the origin story because that was 25 years ago. And Mark, so it was 2000, thereabouts. Mark was running the private equity business at Black And he had been at Blackstone since the 80s around the time of inception.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we struggled with a name because every name was taken. And the idea was pretty simple, even though the name Centerbridge sounds, you know, it's got a direction in it. It's got a bridge. It's got a view. It's whatever. The idea was we were going to take two strategies private credit, which was my area of expertise, and private equity, which was my co-founder, Mark O'Glie's area of expertise, and bridge him to the center. So there actually was some method behind the madness.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uncharacteristic, and he said, Jeffrey, we've thought of you as our son, which was such a nice thing to say. And I tell my wife, I told her the story that evening. But then I said, that was exactly the problem. Is that I was still 26 In their eyes That really summed it up is that why I had to do my own thing. And I did it with a good friend of mine, Marcologli, who was at Blackstone for many years as well.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was good with clients, so that was all good. But what I really wanted was I wanted a chance to drive the bus. I wanted that chance. I'll tell you about my partner, but it was a great story. When I left Angelo Gordon, I remember. What year was this? February 2005 was 20 years ago. And my heart was racing. And I went in there and I told them that I wanted to leave. He stood up. He always called me Jeffrey. And he hugged me.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I loved my bosses, John, Angela, and Michael Gordon. They were my mentors. They raised me professionally. But I had been there, I'd worked with them for a very long time. We had a great relationship. I kind of did my own thing. They left me alone. There was never arguments over comp or anything like that. It was great.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started to evolve, and we started to evolve. So, a business that had been focused on trading and total return started to evolve into a business which is now also focused on primary origination. We were making a loan and the return was a function of yield. Cash It was a real sea change. And if I look at our opportunistic credit business today, it is half primary originations where we're making money through yield and half focus on secondary markets where we're focused on total return. And it's been a huge sea change. And I think it's going to continue.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the banks retreated, regulatory reasons, and Wall Street abhors a vacuum, and all of a sudden a new business started of private lenders, non-bank lenders, making loans. And what happened in the distress business, we even started changing the name. It was no longer called distress. It was called Opportunistic Credit. Sounded a little kinder. Exactly.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the business for decades was marked by two things. One, it was function of secondary markets. And from a return perspective, it was a total return investment. You bought something at 70 because it was worth $100. There was no yield because often these companies were bankrupt. So, definitionally, there was no yield whatsoever. And what happened after the GFC, a couple of things happened. First, private credit came into Vogue. Now, private credit, again, is a bit of a misnomer because it means different things to different people. But if you think about it, it's principally direct lending.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After the Civil War. And there was a well known speculator named Jay Gould. And there have been books written about him. And all through the 20th century, and Goldman was doing this as well, and Bear Stearns in particular. Through the Great Depression and things like that, it was typically involved fallen angels, an investment great company that had fallen on hard times.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's change. First, it's been around forever. I mean, if you go back to the 19th century where there were people that were speculating in railroad bonds after thinking,”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not about the distress that business per se, but just about being a young person on the buy side. And we had just started Angelo Gordon, and I was an analyst, but they had me talking to a trader at Solomon Brothers, very senior guy. I can't remember his name. A prototypical trader, a little gruff, colorful use of language, and things like that. And I talked with him and he says, great, really interesting. Next time you're my first call. So I got off and I told everyone it was a small office, a dozen people. And they were all hysterical, laughing that I actually believe this fellow that always sticks in my mind, but a lot of characters.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is in the late 1980s. Distress was a complete backwater. There were really three banks that invested in it through their arbitrage departments, Goldman Sachs, LF Rothschild and Bear Stearns. And there were a handful, and I mean truly a handful of firms that invested in these types of assets. And Angelo Gordon was one. And it was not institutionalized at all. The capital was all typically from high net worth individuals. There were no large institution allocators or anything like that. And it was a backwater of an area, and it really stayed that way until the recession in the early 90s after Drexel went bankrupt and the S&L crisis. And that's when the business really started coming into its own. There are a lot of characters, a lot of characters in this business. I mean, a funny story.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they gave me a chance. And unlike law, you know, I loved investing. It was like doing puzzles and I was interested in it and Russ's history.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, it's like I don't want to be a lawyer. My employer just went bankrupt. I am student loans like up to my neck. I'm newly married. And John and Michael said we're going to go start a new firm. And I said, well, I'm going with you. And I remember Michael Gordon kiddingly said, well, you're a lawyer. You can't add. And I said, I'm actually okay with numbers. I said, give me a chance. I honestly said I'll work for free. I was hoping they wouldn't take me. Yeah, no kid.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stroken, struck in Levant. 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 LF Rothschild went bankrupt”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-08-19 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Paid to Sweat: Centerbridge's Jeff Aronson on the Growth of Private Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT