How Antony built the fortune
Antony Ressler, often known as Tony, built his wealth in private credit and private equity. He began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the investment bank that dominated the high yield bond market in the 1980s. When Drexel collapsed in 1990, Ressler joined Leon Black and several other former colleagues in founding Apollo, which bought distressed debt and companies at the bottom of the credit cycle in the early 1990s. Those investments produced strong returns and set Apollo on its path to becoming one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world.
In 1997 Ressler left to co found Ares Management in Los Angeles with partners including Bennett Rosenthal and John Kissick. Ares began with leveraged loans and high yield bonds and expanded into direct lending to mid sized companies, private equity, real estate and infrastructure. Its business development company, Ares Capital, became one of the largest listed lenders of its type in the United States.
Ares listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. As a co founder and executive chairman, Ressler holds a large stake in the company, which earns fees on the assets it manages and a share of investment profits. The growth of private credit, as banks retreated from some kinds of lending after the 2008 crisis, has been the main driver of Ares's expansion.
Ares has grown partly through acquisitions of other managers and partly by raising ever larger funds from pension plans, insurers and wealthy individuals. Its credit business lends to companies owned by private equity firms, an area in which it competes with banks and with other alternative asset managers, including Apollo.
Companies and holdings
Ressler's main holdings and roles include:
- Ares Management, where he is co founder and executive chairman
- The Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association, acquired by a group he led in 2015
- A minority stake in the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team
- Earlier interests from his time as a co founder of Apollo
As principal owner of the Hawks he has overseen the renovation of the team's arena, now State Farm Arena, and development projects around it in downtown Atlanta.
Early life and career
Ressler was born in 1960 and grew up in the United States. He studied at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and earned an MBA at Columbia Business School. He joined Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980s and worked in its high yield bond business, where he learned how to evaluate companies with heavy debt loads and how to structure financing for leveraged deals.
The collapse of Drexel after its legal troubles was a turning point. Ressler was part of the small group of Drexel alumni who launched Apollo, and he helped run its capital markets activities in the early years. His decision to leave Apollo and start Ares in Los Angeles allowed him to build a firm centred on credit, an area he saw as underserved by traditional banks. He has remained based in Los Angeles while his Hawks ownership ties him to Atlanta.
Colleagues have described Ressler as a builder of partnerships, and Ares has kept many of its founding team members in senior roles for decades. He handed the chief executive title to Michael Arougheti in 2018 and has since focused on strategy, fundraising relationships and his role as chairman.
Philanthropy and public life
Ressler and his wife, the actress Jami Gertz, give through the Ressler Gertz Family Foundation. Their giving has supported health care, education, Jewish organisations and the arts, with much of it directed to institutions in Los Angeles.
In Atlanta, the Hawks and their foundation fund community programmes, including support for youth basketball courts and voting access initiatives; State Farm Arena was used as a large polling site during the 2020 election. Ressler has also served on the boards of several cultural and educational institutions.
Ressler has said that owning a sports team in a city like Atlanta carries civic responsibilities, and the Hawks have invested in community courts and youth programmes across the metropolitan area. He has also been a vocal advocate for diversity in sports management and among investment professionals.