Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Apollo Global Management is aiming to more than double in size over the next five years and become one of the largest debt underwriters in the world, under new targets unveiled by chief executive Marc Rowan.
Rowan on Tuesday laid out plans to increase Apollo’s assets under management from less than $700bn to $1.5tn by 2029, as companies increasingly turn to the private capital group for credit instead of the banks on which they have historically relied.
Rowan and his team at Apollo used Tuesday’s investor day presentation to triumphantly mark the beginning of a new era with asset managers at the forefront of high finance, explicitly declaring a 30-year reign of Wall Street banks now dead. Nonetheless, it also presented itself as an ally of large banks and said it would announce added partnerships after striking lending ventures with Citigroup and BNP Paribas in recent weeks.
The growth plans of Apollo, once just a small private partnership focused mostly on leveraged buyouts, underscores how the private equity industry has pushed far beyond its roots to play a role in how corporate America and millions of consumers finance themselves.
Apollo owns an insurer, Athene, which has provided it with a ready source of low-cost capital to fund deals and which is sitting on $33bn in capital reserves. Apollo said its funding costs were about half the industry average on Tuesday.
Large corporations such as Air France, Intel and AB InBev are increasingly willing to turn to Apollo for capital rather than to banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
Fuelling Apollo’s ambitions are also what it sees as enormous opportunities to make loans to utilities, data centres and renewable infrastructure companies that will have trillions of dollars in capital needs but often require specially tailored financings.
“In every market, banks are being asked to do less and investors are being asked to do more,” Rowan said. “We are just at the beginning of this trend.”
He added: “At the end of the day private [markets] will win over public [markets]. That doesn’t mean replace public, it just grows faster. Private will win over banks. Again they won’t replace banks, just grow faster.”
If Apollo meets the new targets set by Rowan — including originating $275bn in debt annually within five years — it would make the group one of the biggest debt underwriters on Wall Street. Last year, JPMorgan was the lead underwriter on $268bn of corporate debt and securitisations, the largest player in the market, according to data provider LSEG.
Over the past 12 months, Apollo has originated $164bn in new loans, far surpassing its earlier targets.
Apollo’s reach into many of the largest corners of financial markets — including underwriting investment grade-rated debt and bundling securities of car loans and rooftop solar installations — is the result of its move into the insurance market through its life insurance arm Athene.
The unit, built by Rowan and other executives in the aftermath of the financial crisis, has given the group hundreds of billions of dollars of policyholder money to invest and has powered its expansion.
If Apollo is to meet the new targets, it will increasingly have to adopt features more closely associated with a large banking institution than its buyout roots. The group’s growth will also invite more scrutiny from financial regulators concerned about the growth of finance outside of the banking industry.
Rowan was questioned on Tuesday about how the firm would avoid underwriting mistakes — in effect loans that default or where a borrower falls into distress — as it increased its origination targets.
“When you consume the asset yourself, you are very concerned about what happens,” Rowan said, drawing a contrast with banks that largely underwrite loans with the goal to ultimately sell them on to other investors.
To invest the $150bn of investor money that Apollo predicts it will raise through insurance policies and private investment funds each year, it has bought or invested in more than a dozen specialised lenders and loan originators.
Last year, it acquired Credit Suisse’s securitised products unit, now called AtlasSP, which had for years been a vaunted Wall Street operation in asset-backed financing markets.
Rowan cautioned that the trends fuelling its business such as rock-bottom interest rates had shifted, requiring its dealmakers to adapt. “Change is coming. The tailwinds that got us here are not here any more,” he said.
However, Rowan ruled out large acquisitions as part of the group’s strategy despite a wave of consolidation in the asset management industry highlighted by BlackRock’s $12.5bn acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners, which closed on Tuesday. “I don’t see significant M&A for us on the horizon,” said Rowan.
Shares of Apollo climbed 5 per cent on Tuesday, lifting its total return to the year to nearly 43 per cent.
Read the full article here
