UBS’s Rajeev Misra Said to Plan Move to Fortress Hedge Fund

(Updates with Fortress asset growth in third paragraph.)

April 15 (Bloomberg) — Rajeev Misra, UBS AG’s former co- head of fixed-income, is preparing to leave the Swiss bank for Fortress Investment Group LLC, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Misra, who has served as a senior adviser to UBS’s executive board since June, is poised to join the private equity and hedge-fund firm next month as a senior managing director in its credit operations, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Misra formerly worked at Deutsche Bank AG.

The potential hire comes as New York-based Fortress’s assets under management have climbed 41 percent to $62 billion since the end of 2011. Shares of the company, the first publicy traded private-equity and hedge-fund manager in the U.S., more than doubled last year as the firm’s macro funds posted gains and fee income rose.

Fortress’s credit business, which manages hedge funds and private equity-style vehicles, reported a 40 percent increase in pretax distributable earnings for 2013 to the highest level since the business started in 2002.

Misra will work for Peter Briger, who is responsible for Fortress’s credit and real-estate businesses.

Before taking on the adviser role, Misra headed financing solutions, a group within the investment bank that focuses on bespoke solutions for clients and includes leveraged finance, commercial real estate and mortgage finance in the U.S.

Misra previously co-headed fixed-income, currencies and commodities at UBS before Switzerland’s biggest bank decided to scale down that division in 2012. He joined UBS in 2009 to lead its credit business and previously worked for Deutsche Bank AG, where he held a similar role until his departure in June 2008.

Gordon Runte, a spokesman for Fortress, said he couldn’t immediately provide comment. Samuel Brandner, a spokesman for UBS, declined to comment.

–With assistance from Katherine Burton and Devin Banerjee in New York.

To contact the reporters on this story: Elena Logutenkova in Zurich at [e-mail]; Jacqueline Simmons in Paris at [e-mail]; Stephanie Ruhle in New York at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at [e-mail]; Frank Connelly at [e-mail] Pierre Paulden