SONIA GARDNER

Gardner started as a bankruptcy attorney, not a trader. In 1987 she and her brother Marc Lasry launched the bankruptcy and reorganization desk at Cowen and Company, back when buying the debt of failing companies was still a fringe idea.

In 1989 they co-founded Amroc Investments, a debt brokerage, where she was a senior portfolio manager reviewing and trading the debt of hundreds of bankruptcies. In 1995 the siblings founded Avenue Capital Group with about $7 million.

Gardner became president and the partner in charge of running the firm globally. Avenue grew into one of the largest distressed-debt investors on the planet, managing roughly $12.6 billion.

In 2015 she was elected global chair of 100 Women in Hedge Funds.

Avenue Capital Group, formerly Amroc Investments and Cowen and Company

Avenue buys distressed debt, meaning the bonds, loans and trade claims of companies that are broke or close to it. Gardner and Lasry were early to this, back when most investors saw a bankrupt company as garbage rather than an opportunity.

Their edge is legal. Bankruptcy is a courtroom fight, and Gardner is a trained lawyer who understands restructuring rules across the US, Europe and Asia.

She and Lasry split the work. He hunts the big themes and raises capital.

She runs the investment operations. The firm looks at a wreck and tries to see what it will be worth once it is fixed.

The whole Avenue story is the win. Gardner and Lasry started with about $7 million in 1995 and grew the firm past $12 billion.

They did it by being early to distressed debt, a strategy that pays off hugest in crises. When companies collapse in a downturn, Avenue is a buyer, scooping up debt at pennies on the dollar and collecting when those companies restructure and recover.

Gardner does not publicly dwell on specific losers, so a single defining error is hard to confirm. The built-in danger of her strategy is that distressed bets depend on a workable legal process.

Buy the debt of a company in a country with messy or unpredictable bankruptcy law and the recovery you modeled can vanish. It is exactly why she stresses understanding different legal systems before putting money to work.

Gardner believes value hides in situations that look ugly on the surface. Avenue's stated edge is the ability to look at an outwardly difficult situation and see future value.

She is a big believer that even in crowded, competitive markets, opportunities are always there if you do the legal and financial homework. She credits her philosophy degree for teaching her to think logically and stay open to new ideas, and her law degree for the bankruptcy knowledge that pays the bills.

Gardner was born Sonia Esther Lasry in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 1962, and immigrated to the United States at age four, growing up in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her brother is fellow investor Marc Lasry, her co-founder at Avenue.

She is married to Alan Gardner and has one child. Her father was a computer programmer and her mother a schoolteacher.

Gardner earned a philosophy degree from Clark University in 1983, then a law degree from the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in 1986. She says the philosophy degree taught her to think logically, evaluate arguments and stay open to new ideas.

The law degree was the practical one, since distressed investing is basically bankruptcy law with money on the line.

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