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Who

Leon "Lee" Cooperman is the founder and chairman of Omega Advisors, a hedge fund with approximately $6 billion under management.

Backstory

If it seems like Goldman Sachs regularly churns out alumni who go on to run wildly successful hedge funds (Richard Perry, Eddie Lampert, Daniel Och), keep in mind it wasn't always that way. South Bronx native Leon Cooperman was one of the first. A graduate of Columbia Business School (where he was pals with Art Samberg and Mario Gabelli), Cooperman joined Goldman Sachs at the age of 24 and spent the next quarter-century at the firm, serving as the head of the firm's research department (where he was voted the No. 1 portfolio strategist in the Institutional Investor All-America Research Team nine years in a row) and later as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

In 1991, Cooperman struck out on his own, founding Omega Advisors with $450 million in capital. Although he's had his share of challenges over the years—the fund was hard hit by the Russian financial crisis and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in the late '90s, and 2002 was a particularly bad year when the fund lost 11 percent—Cooperman remains a legend in hedge fund circles.

Keeping score

Trader Monthly estimated Cooperman's take-home in 2007 at $100-$150 million. He's worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Board game

Cooperman is on the board of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and Saint Barnabas Hospital. He's also on the board of overseers of Columbia's Graduate School of Business, along with Vikram Pandit, Ron Perelman, Shelly Lazarus, Jerry Speyer, and old classmate Art Samberg.

Controversy

Omega Advisers handed over $500,000 in 2007 to resolve a federal bribery investigation into its investment of more than $100 million in Azerbaijan. A former Omega executive, Clayton Lewis, was accused of colluding with Czech financier Viktor Kozeny to bribe Azeri leaders to win control of the state-run oil company.

Personal

Cooperman's wife, Toby, is a former teacher. The couple has two sons, Wayne and Mark. (Wayne has followed in his father's footsteps. He manages the hedge fund Cobalt Capital Management.) The couple lives in Short Hills, NJ.