Alex Rovt, the Fertilizer Baron of Manhattan

It’s a truism of New York real estate that one man’s desperation is another’s opportunity. Joshua Zamir recently found himself on the wrong side of this ruthless equation. In 2007, Zamir’s property investment firm, with backing from the Carlyle Group, bought the old Bankers Trust Building, a 37-story Wall Street landmark with a distinctive pyramidal roof. Then just 28, Zamir took on massive debt to make the $325 million purchase, planning to renovate and lure high-paying tenants. Over the intervening five years, the deal went awry, as office rents failed to rise to meet the crushing burden of the skyscraper’s loans. By this spring, with the skyscraper’s $145 million first mortgage almost due, Zamir was looking for a savior. That’s when he heard from a billionaire named Alex Rovt.

Born in what is now Ukraine, Rovt was little known outside New York’s insular Russian-speaking community. Having made a fortune in the gritty Eastern European fertilizer trade, he was in the process of transferring his enormous wealth into something he considered far more secure: New York real estate. Although Rovt and Zamir knew each other socially, the billionaire was unsentimental. “He told me he was very interested in buying the debt,” Zamir says, “and if I didn’t work with him, he would do it anyway.” In April, Rovt bought the building for $303 million, with Zamir’s firm holding onto a small ownership interest.