How Private Credit’s Master Of Disaster Made An $800 Million Fortune

Forbes Daily Briefing · Aug 19, 2026 · 6m

Leonard Tannenbaum’s newest venture was supposed to be a sure thing. In 2020, after selling his previous company, Fifth Street, under a cloud of investor litigation and an SEC settlement, the veteran financier recast himself as a pioneering lender to underbanked cannabis firms. Weed was booming as Americans sat out the pandemic stressed and bored. But marijuana was illegal at the federal level, leaving most pot operations shut out of traditional banking. Tannenbaum had the perfect Wall Street pitch: Become the dominant institutional lender to the fast-growing $19 billion industry by offering…