A ntony Ressler is a towering figure in the world of private equity, having co-founded two of the largest alternative asset management firms in the world. His career began in the 1980s at the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he worked in the high-yield bond department under Michael Milken. It was there he met his future brother-in-law, Leon Black, and other partners with whom he would later make financial history.

In 1990, after Drexel's collapse, Ressler co-founded the private equity giant Apollo Global Management with Leon Black and Joshua Harris. Seven years later, in 1997, he left Apollo to co-found another firm, Ares Management, with a focus on credit-based strategies. He has successfully built Ares into a massive global investment manager with hundreds of billions of dollars under management. Beyond his phenomenal success in finance, Ressler is the majority owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA team, leading a group that purchased the franchise in 2015.