- Apollo aims to grow its private-lending business to $1.2 trillion by 2029.
- Asset managers, like Apollo, are taking over lending once handled by banks, CEO Marc Rowan said.
- Here are 7 slides from Apollo’s investor day that lay out the plan behind its $1-trillion plan.
The biggest player in non-bank loans has set a massive new goal for itself: more than doubling its $562 billion private lending business to $1.2 trillion in five years.
The trillion-dollar goal has become a high watermark for asset managers generally. Blackstone became the first private-equity firm to manage $1 trillion in assets last year, while KKR set its own trillion-dollar goal this year.
But unlike its competitors, the lion’s share of Apollo’s growth comes from its lending arm, which was bolstered by growing demand for private credit in the face of a banking crisis, and by the firm’s merger with retirement services provider Athene, which has provided Apollo with the ample capital it needs to make loans.
“Everywhere in the world, banks are being asked to do less, and investors are being asked to do more,” Apollo CEO Rowan said at the bank’s annual presentation for investors on Tuesday.
Indeed, private lenders like Apollo are increasingly providing investment-grade lending to large corporate clients in addition to short-term loans. On Tuesday, Rowan and Apollo’s deputy CIO of credit, John Zito, pointed to Apollo’s AG InBev deal four years ago as a watershed moment for the firm, and a told-you-so moment for the industry.
“When we did the first investment grade financing for AB InBev a number of years ago, many in this room and many of our competitors and most of the street said, ‘That $4 billion is the last $4 billion that you will ever do,'” Rowan said. “That was $100 billion ago and $11 billion just for Intel. This is just getting started.”
At $1.2 trillion, Apollo will manage as much in loans as JPMorgan Chase last year, according to data tracker Statista. (Rowan and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have debated the merits of private credit before, as BI has previously reported.)
Apollo plans to more than double both its private credit and equity businesses by 2029, which would bring total assets under management to roughly $1.5 trillion. At its last investor day in 2023, it set a goal to hit $1 trillion in total assets under management, including private loans, by 2026.
Here’s how Apollo plans to grow to over $1 trillion in private lending alone.
