Antony Ressler

Antony P. Ressler was born October 12, 1960, in Washington, D.C. He earned a B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and an M.B.A. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He began his Wall Street career at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the junk-bond powerhouse, where he rose to Senior Vice President in the high-yield bond department and ran the new-issue/syndicate desk.

After Drexel's 1990 collapse, Ressler co-founded Apollo Global Management alongside former Drexel colleagues Leon Black (his brother-in-law), Joshua Harris, and Marc Rowan, focusing on leveraged buyouts and distressed securities. In 1997 he co-founded Ares Management with John H. Kissick and Bennett Rosenthal, building it into a leading global alternative asset manager spanning credit, private equity, and real estate. Ares went public in 2014, and Ressler serves as its Executive Chairman and a member of key investment committees (Private Equity Group, Credit Group, Real Estate Group, and the Ares Sports, Media & Entertainment Investment Committee).

Ressler is also a prominent sports-team owner. In June 2015 he led an investor group that bought the NBA's Atlanta Hawks for roughly $850 million, serving as Principal Owner and Chairman; the franchise has since been valued at well over $4 billion. He also holds a minority stake in MLB's Milwaukee Brewers, having joined Mark Attanasio's ownership group in 2005. Forbes has estimated his net worth in the $10–13 billion range (roughly $12.6B in early 2025).

Outside of business, Ressler is active in philanthropy and civic life. He is a founding member and finance chair of the Painted Turtle Camp (for children with serious illnesses), co-chair of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Board of Trustees, and a board member of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a Trustee of Georgetown University. He is married to actress Jami Gertz, with whom he has four children, and lives in Los Angeles.

• Invests through institutional Ares funds rather than personal angel/seed rounds — spanning credit, private equity, real estate, and sports/media/entertainment.
• Roots in distressed and high-yield credit (Drexel, Apollo, Ares): a value orientation toward undervalued, distressed, or complex assets that can be restructured and turned around.
• Sits on multiple Ares investment committees, giving him direct influence over private-equity control deals and credit strategies.
• Increasingly focused on sports, media, and entertainment, an area Ares has built into a dedicated investment vertical — mirroring his personal ownership of NBA and MLB franchises.
• Founder-mentality bias: he has repeatedly co-founded firms (Apollo, Ares) built around partnership and building durable platforms rather than single deals.