Apollo’s Mile High Club

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Happy Wednesday, welcome back to Dry Powder.

It’s been rough sailing for Apollo Global Management—an Epstein-adjacent scandal, followed by a failed power-grab, both involving co-founders, in the span of a handful of years. But the seas have settled. Apollo is back to being Apollo, and its current, counterintuitive target—yes, the airline industry—is the perfect window into the firm’s broader strategic vision. My thoughts on the M&A endgame in today’s Dry Powder.

Bill

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Apollo’s Mile High Club

In the post-Black, post-Harris era, Apollo has eaten up the airline industry with a carnivorous blend of opportunism and financial creativity, and a healthy appetite for risk. Is owning an airline the endgame?

WILLIAM D. COHAN

It’s been an eventful few years for our old friends at Apollo Global Management, the publicly traded private-equity, private-debt, and insurance behemoth with some $500 billion under management. First, there was the plenty-embarrassing scandal involving Leon Black, one of the three co-founders of the firm, and the revelations about his long-standing entanglements with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Black further embarrassed the firm through a series of revelations contained in dueling lawsuits involving him and his onetime paramour, Guzel Ganieva. Black, still a large shareholder in Apollo, is no longer associated with the firm (and has consistently denied the allegations against him).

Then, there was Apollo co-founder Josh Harris’s ill-timed power play to...

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