Michael Nierenberg

Michael Nierenberg is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Rithm Capital Corp., a New York–based global asset manager that he has led since its 2013 launch (originally as the Fortress Investment Group–affiliated New Residential Investment Corp.). He was appointed CEO and President in November 2013 and became Chairman of the Board in May 2016. In 2022, the company internalized its management from Fortress and rebranded from New Residential to Rithm Capital, repositioning itself from a mortgage-focused REIT into a diversified asset manager.

Nierenberg built his career as a mortgage and securitized-products trader over several decades on Wall Street. He spent roughly seven years at Lehman Brothers, where he was instrumental in building the firm's adjustable-rate mortgage business. He then spent 14 years at Bear Stearns, holding senior roles including Head of Interest Rate and Foreign Exchange Trading, Co-Head of Structured Products, and Co-Head of Mortgage-Backed Securities Trading; he sat on Bear Stearns's Board of Directors from 2006 to 2008.

Following Bear Stearns, he served as Head of Global Securitized Products and a member of the investment bank's management committee at J.P. Morgan, before joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch in November 2008 as Managing Director and Head of Global Mortgages and Securitized Products. He left that role to take the helm of New Residential in 2013.

Under Nierenberg, Rithm has scaled into a platform managing roughly $100 billion-plus in investable assets — approximately $47 billion on its balance sheet and around $55 billion in third-party assets under management — through a series of strategic acquisitions. He continues to be a frequent industry speaker, including at the Milken Institute, on topics such as private credit and asset-based finance.

• Invests at institutional/corporate scale across real estate, private credit, structured and corporate credit, mortgage origination and servicing, fund liquidity, and insurance/reinsurance — not venture or seed stage.
• Pursues a deliberate M&A-driven growth strategy; Nierenberg has publicly framed the goal as building toward a $100B+ (and beyond) diversified asset-management platform.
• Favors acquiring established operating platforms and complementary businesses (mortgage, hedge fund, direct lending, office real estate) that can be integrated onto Rithm's balance sheet and asset-management franchise.
• Combines on-balance-sheet investing with a growing third-party asset-management model, blending REIT/yield exposure with fee-based AUM.
• Deep specialization in mortgages and securitized products underpins much of the firm's credit and real-estate investing.