Apollo to launch private equity secondaries fund this year

Apollo Global Management, one of the latest mega-entrants to the secondaries buyside, is set to officially join the private equity secondaries market.

Speaking on the firm’s fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call this month, co-president Jim Zelter gave details of Apollo’s fundraising plans.

“We expect formally to launch fundraising for an equity secondary fund in the second quarter and opportunistically raise capital for our credit secondaries fund ahead of a dedicated fundraise in 2024,” Zelter said.

The New York-headquartered firm launched its Sponsor and Secondary Solutions platform, S3, last year with the hire of a team from BlackRock and adding to its existing credit secondaries team. This initiative is “building scale” having received a cornerstone investment from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Zelter added.

S3 has committed to deploy more than $13 billion since 2020, mainly in fund finance, according to Zelter. It has committed more than $1 billion into equity and credit secondaries over the past six months.

Speaking to Secondaries Investor off the back of the S3 launch last August, co-president Scott Kleinman said the unit launched as a sub-business to Apollo to ensure it is understood it is a segregated business with enhanced policies and procedures around information flow.

“S3 will have access to the knowledge and expertise of Apollo’s broader 2,500-person platform, but that information flows in, not out,” he said.

The secondaries market has seen a slew of new entrants in recent months. In January, Brookfield Asset Management agreed to acquire DWS’s private equity secondaries business in what it referred to as a “transfer”, while this month, retail capital-focused FS Investments agreed to combine with Portfolio Advisors, creating an alternatives firm with $73 billion in asset under management.

– Read more on new entrants to the secondaries market here.