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Profile Fortress
All systems go as Fortress embarks on European dream
by Lisa Lee and Kathryn Gaw
Fortress has long been planning its European expansion. Now it’s hiring and upsizing in London
Fortress Investment Group is making a concerted push into European corporate credit. The firm was one of the first in the US to recognise the potential of European direct lending. It began to scope out European prospects for a CLO focused on mid-sized and smaller businesses in 2013.
“We were almost too early,” says Niccolò Biancheri, Fortress’s managing director and head of corporate credit, Europe, looking back. “The reality is that the market was just recovering from the financial crisis.”
Fast forward to 2026, and a whiff of crisis has been in the air again, this time unsettling parts of the private credit industry with worries about liquidity and loan defaults. But the European ambitions at Fortress, which has more than USD 50bn in assets under management globally, appear undimmed.
Leveraging existing relationships
The team is confident the success factors are in place. “We’ve been in Europe a long time,” says Biancheri. “We have insights into what’s happening at the country level. We have sponsor relationships. We’re not just growing for the sake of growing.”
The brand has had a presence in Europe since the early 2000s, but with a focus on opportunistic credit for companies under financing pressure, until Biancheri joined in 2016. A year later Fortress opened an office in Marylebone, central London, and started scaling up its European operations, galvanised by a series of key hires for the CLO and direct lending businesses.
Fortress formally entered the European CLO market in November 2024 with an EUR 456.25m vehicle arranged by Natixis that was made up of broadly syndicated loans.
Marylebone: home to Fortress in London
In May 2025, Biancheri was promoted to head of corporate credit in Europe, from a deputy position, while Giovanni Luna joined as managing director, head of origination, for Europe. Edouard de La Rochefoucauld, director, EU direct lending, joined in August.
Around the same time, Fortress co-CEO Josh Pack relocated to London to spearhead the European expansion. Pack’s sudden passing in September 2025 left Fortress reeling from the loss of a leader hailed by the company as “a gifted investor and a thoughtful strategist”.
Jack Neumark moved into the co-CEO position and later commended the team’s ability to adapt to such a grave loss. “That’s part of what we learned from Josh,” he said in a statement at the time.
By this point, plans for the European business were underway. Analysts had been brought in to help underwrite loans in what Biancheri described as the Fortress tradition of “very bottom-up, fundamental credit work”. The Marylebone office was becoming crowded, and this year the team will move into a bigger space in the neighbourhood.
We’ve been in Europe a long time
Niccolò Biancheri
Head of corporate credit, Europe
Fortress
The firm also boasts offices in Madrid, Rome, Paris and The Netherlands, as well as a representative in Milan. From these bridgeheads Fortress is aiming to expand its corporate credit business across Europe.
Biancheri said headcount has tripled over the past few years to support growth in opportunistic and capital solutions, as well as distressed credit.
De La Rochefoucauld describes his firm as having a “laser focus” on Europe, specifically on scalable strategies such as direct lending. “Fortress has a real track record, which underpins its differentiation,” he says.
Manager specialisation and portfolio selection is key in the direct lending space, and Fortress’s US expertise and experience in niche spaces, such as defence, can also help differentiate the firm from the competition, says de La Rochefoucauld.
“I don’t know many people who are doing much defence and consumer,” he says. “Because of the knowledge of the platform, it’s really one team, one dream.”
Historically, Fortress has invested in dislocated primary senior credit — loans to basically sound companies that may be undergoing financing challenges. Going forward, Biancheri is focused on deals within the large wave of credit coming due in 2028.
As for direct lending, the firm prefers to focus on the core middle market — the EUR 15 to EUR 50m EBITDA space. Most of the deals so far have been in the UK and northern Europe, but the company is setting its sights on the whole of western Europe.
Fortress Investment Group
- Founded: 1998
- Global AUM: USD 54bn at 30 Sep 2025
- Recent activity: announced restructuring of UK retailer Poundstretcher
- Investment philosophy: focuses on a broad credit spectrum across corporate, asset-based and real estate, including prime lending, opportunistic and distressed
