AI Summary
5 min readSteven Tananbaum, founder and CIO of GoldenTree Asset Management, began his career at Kidder Peabody, where the jump from 25 hours of work per week as a student to 100 hours as an analyst forced him to become "very deliberate" about how he curated his day. That early discipline—deciding what to accomplish and being results-oriented—became the foundation of a career managing over $70 billion in credit assets. When he took over a portfolio at Mackay Shields that ranked 89th out of 91, he saw it as a gift: "There's only one place to go." Within three years, he took it to number one.
The Game Theory of Other Investors
Tananbaum does not describe himself as a credit investor but simply as an investor who wants to understand the best part of any capital structure. A key early insight was learning to think not just about what was logical, but about how other portfolio managers actually behaved. When he experienced outflows, he sold his hardest-to-sell positions first because he knew he could not unload them quickly. He noticed that other managers did the opposite—selling their most liquid holdings first. Later, after the financial crisis, he realized that selling loans at 86 cents rather than 82 cents gave buyers much higher credit in CLO structures. He began lifting his offers to 86 cents because he knew exactly what the other side was looking for. This observational game theor
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **Opening Frame: AI's Two-Fold Impact on Credit** - Steven frames the conversation by distinguishing AI's economic driver role from its market opportunity role.
- 2 (01:13) **Early Career: The Deliberate Day and the Gift of a Bad Portfolio** - Steven describes his first jobs at Kidder Peabody and MacKay Shields, focusing on the lessons in process and contrarian opportunity.
- 3 (03:38) **Game Theory: Watching How Other Managers Behave** - Steven explains his early insight into behavioral game theory, which he used to anticipate market moves.
- 4 (04:43) **Self-Image: Investor, Not Just a Credit Investor** - Steven rejects being pigeonholed as a credit investor, describing himself as a generalist who evaluates the entire capital structure.
- 5 (05:29) **The Entrepreneurial Pivot: Why He Left MacKay Shields** - Steven explains the structural opportunity he saw in the credit market that drove him to start GoldenTree.
- 6 (07:07) **Launching in 2000: Navigating the Dot-Com Hangover** - Steven describes the market environment at GoldenTree's founding and how he found opportunity in the TMT sell-off.
- 7 (08:56) **The Humbling Year of 2008 and the Comeback** - Steven recounts the worst year of his career and the strategic changes that led to a rapid recovery.
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Show Notes
Goldman Sachs President John Waldron speaks with Steven Tananbaum, CIO of GoldenTree Asset Management, about how GoldenTree became a credit-focused asset manager overseeing $70 billion. They discuss how credit markets have evolved during Tananbaum’s career, his framework for analyzing investments, and how financing for artificial intelligence is affecting credit markets.
This episode was recorded on July 23, 2026.
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