Lead Executive
J. Brian Bailey
Mr. Bailey serves as the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Oak Stone. He is a senior executive with more than 25 years of experience in the public and private capital markets, dating to the late 1990s. An active participant in both the private and public securitization markets, he has built deep expertise across a broad range of financial products and asset classes — including structured credit, real assets, and operating businesses.
Mr. Bailey has spoken on fixed income, securitization, alternative assets, and capital markets strategy at numerous national and international investment conferences over the past two decades, and is a recognized voice in the institutional investment community. His perspective is grounded in restructuring and special situations, disciplined underwriting, and the deployment of risk-based capital across complex market environments.
Private Equity Firm
Beal Bank
Wells Fargo Capital Finance
Public & Private Markets
Chief Executive Officer / Chief Investment Officer
Prior to forming Oak Stone, Mr. Bailey was the Chief Investment Officer, and later Chief Executive Officer, of a publicly traded private equity firm, where he directed capital allocation, investment strategy, and investor relations. When the firm entered a complex Chapter 11 restructuring, he was the only C-level executive retained by the court and the Chief Restructuring Officer to help steer the process, and was subsequently engaged by the court-appointed Trustee to lead the wind-down and liquidation of a significantly impaired estate.
Managing Director
Prior to that, Mr. Bailey was a Managing Director at Beal Bank, where he led a number of investment teams. Most notably, he founded the Insurance Lending Group, which he grew into one of the largest institutional capital sources in its market between 2011 and 2018. He also led the bank's Interest Rate Derivatives and Hedging teams, as well as its Residential Real Estate team, which focused on running off the legacy real estate assets the bank acquired during the 2007–2011 credit downturn.
Senior Vice President
Prior to joining Beal Bank, Mr. Bailey was a Senior Vice President with Wells Fargo Capital Finance (f/k/a Wells Fargo Foothill), where he built out a structured finance investment vertical focused on providing below-investment-grade credit to commercial specialty finance companies.
Senior Leadership Roles & Partner
Prior to joining Foothill, Mr. Bailey held various senior leadership positions across the public and private capital markets, deploying risk-based capital to a range of asset classes — from investment-grade and high-yield public debt to the derivatives, equity, and futures markets. Earlier in his career he was promoted to Partner of a large hedge fund 18 months after college, and following his firm's acquisition by ORIX USA, founded and led its structured credit division.