Michael Ainbinder, 33

There’s a lot of distress out there, and Michael Ainbinder is one of those people looking for the upside in it.

What he’s found is that companies are for one reason or another — the pandemic, remote or hybrid work, rising or risen interest rates — finding it hard to make the payments on loans. That’s where Ainbinder, who earned a business administration degree from Emory University, comes in. 

He is the eyes and the ears of the CRE-focused credit team for Northwind Group, a Manhattan-based real estate private equity firm and debt fund manager with $4 billion in assets under management. Notable recent transactions include a $313 million completion-condo inventory loan for 125 Greenwich Street in New York for Fortress Investment Group, which helped resume construction on the long-stalled condominum project.

“The bread and butter of my career has been focused on credit — high-yielding credit,” he said. “Right now, we’re seeing better risk-adjusted returns in the debt space rather than equity. That’s what I am running day to day at Northwind Group.”

With commercial banks not being as active, it leaves a lot of room for private credit funds like Northwind to capitalize on good deals, “and that has been what we have been focused on,” Ainbinder said.

He made it clear this is not a loan-to-own strategy, however. 

“We can buy nonperforming loans, we have the ability to do that,” Ainbinder said. “We also have the ability to lend against individuals buying nonperforming loans. There’s also situations where banks need to shed assets, like office assets that still may be money-good — because the Fed is saying ‘Get this off your balance sheet.’ So we can buy at a slight discount to par.”