Fortress Said to Hire Ex-RBS Trader Siegel in Mortgage Expansion

Fortress Investment Group hired Adam Siegel, a former trader at Royal Bank of Scotland Group, to expand its mortgage business.

Siegel started this week as a managing director at $62.5 billion Fortress, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named because the information is private. He was formerly co-head of mortgage and U.S. corporate trading at Edinburgh-based RBS's securities unit, after joining in 2008 from Bear Stearns Cos., according to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records.

Fortress, the first publicly traded private-equity and hedge-fund manager in the U.S., has invested heavily in financial services business with holdings including subprime lender Springleaf Finance Corp. and mortgage servicer Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. It's also taking advantage of Wall Street turmoil this year by adding mortgage, foreign exchange and credit traders as banks cut compensation and face increasing scrutiny from regulators.

Gordon Runte, a Fortress spokesman, declined to comment on the hire, and Siegel didn't return calls for comment.

Siegel will work with Michael Nierenberg, who joined at the end of last year from Bank of America Corp. The former head of global mortgages and securitized products at the bank focuses on residential home loans and property-related holdings. Nierenberg, a former Bear Stearns colleague of Siegel, also runs Fortress's New Residential Investment Corp., a real estate investment trust that makes mortgage-related investments.

Fortress this year recruited two foreign-exchange specialists, Citigroup Inc.'s Jeffrey Feig and Deutsche Bank AG’s Christopher Fahy, for its hedge-fund business. The firm also added Rajeev Misra, UBS AG's former co-head of fixed income.

Earlier this year Siegel was placed on leave from RBS, people familiar with the matter said in April, around the same time as other mortgage-bond traders from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley. He declined to comment on the RBS leave at the time.

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