Marc Rowan, co-founder of Apollo, has built one of the best private equity investments in Athene, an insurance company whose assets now exceed $100 billion. An article in The Financial Times questions the numerous ways in which Apollo has benefited from this investment and calls fees into question, but as a vehicle for profit, it’s difficult to argue with:
“Even its critics concede that from the standpoint of its creators, Athene has been perhaps the greatest investment strategy of the past decade. Apollo has created both a listed $10bn life insurance company as well as a perpetual stream of fees that account for several billion dollars of its own $13bn equity value.”