Apollo Global Management: Drexel Exiles, Athene and an $840 Billion Machine

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Apollo Global Management was founded in 1990 after the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert by Drexel's former head of mergers and acquisitions, Leon Black, with Josh Harris, Marc Rowan and Tony Ressler. With buyout financing frozen, they raised about $400 million and pioneered a distressed-to-control strategy: buying the cheap debt of struggling companies and converting it into controlling equity during bankruptcy or restructuring. An early win was the bond portfolio of failed insurer Executive Life, which drew scrutiny from California regulators. In the 2005 to 2007 boom Apollo bought real estate franchisor Realogy for $8.5 billion and, with TPG, Harrah's Entertainment for $27.4 billion.

The 2008 crisis wiped out Apollo's $365 million investment in Linens 'n Things, and Realogy's debt restructuring drew lawsuits from Carl Icahn. Apollo went public in 2011, bought Chuck E. Cheese, ADT for $6.9 billion and Rackspace, and merged with annuity provider Athene in an $11 billion deal that gave it permanent capital. In 2021 Black stepped down after revelations that he had paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million, and Marc Rowan became CEO. A late 2025 Senate Finance Committee inquiry led by Ron Wyden and a 2026 DOJ Epstein files repository naming Rowan and Scott Kleinman kept scrutiny on the firm.

• At Claire's Stores, Apollo used a PIK toggle that let it pay bondholders in more debt instead of cash.
• Apollo bid on Hostess and bought media assets from Cox Enterprises and textbook publisher McGraw-Hill.
• Teachers' unions called for an SEC investigation as the Epstein-related scrutiny continued.
• Under Rowan, Apollo bought 90 percent of Yahoo and took a 49 percent stake in a $14.2 billion Intel factory venture.
• It took over easyJet for 5.7 billion pounds and bought 55 percent of football club Atlético Madrid.