At the Apollo investor day in 2024, Apollo's CEO Marc Rowan gave a speech, stating that the good fortune of the global asset management industry over the past fifteen years has come to an end. In the future, it is necessary to seize four huge opportunities, which will not only be beneficial to Apollo but are expected to benefit the entire industry.

These four opportunities involve global industrial revival, huge capital needs of global large companies, substantial demand for fixed income in the retirement market, and a rethink of the public and private fundraising markets.

Among them, global industrial revival involves long-term and complex capital needs for infrastructure, energy transformation, next-generation data, and electrical utilities. The retirement market has significant demand for fixed income, especially from individual investors seeking alternative investments, fixed income, and other opportunities.

Rethinking public and private asset management involves challenging traditional concepts. In the current market environment, private and public assets both offer security and risk, potentially promoting a trend where private assets may substitute for fixed income and stocks.

The summary of the key points of the full text is as follows:

• In 2008, the assets under management of all major companies in our industry were $40 billion. By the end of 2023, our managed assets increased to $650 billion, our assets grew 16 to 17 times, no financial services company can grow like this, our growth actually exceeded that of other financial institutions.$Apple (AAPL.US)$surpassing$Microsoft (MSFT.US)$surpassing almost every growth company you can think of.

• Our success is due to positioning our business before the 'windfall' arrived, driving a sevenfold increase in business revenue. In 2008, every existing global financial institution adopted a defensive strategy. We were fortunate to establish a new financial institution in 2008, essentially being in an 'attack mode' for most of these fifteen years.

• I have always emphasized that change is coming, the tailwind that has been driving our development is no longer there, there will be new trends. It is wrong to think that we can succeed by continuing to repeat past practices, we must adapt and change, this applies not only to us but also to the entire industry.

• Global industrial revival, huge capital needs of global large companies. In addition to the tens of trillions borrowed by the US government each year, these funds are used for infrastructure, energy transition, next-generation data and electrical utilities.

• Forty years ago, Australia adopted a method called the retirement pension system, a good way for investors to include private assets and public assets in the investment portfolio under appropriate supervision. After forty years of compound interest, the results are simply amazing. I believe we are at the forefront of re-examining this opportunity, and Athen has just begun.

• Looking back at the retirement market, this is a huge opportunity, with a great demand for fixed income, especially individual investors have a significant demand for alternative investments, fixed income, and other opportunities, this is just the beginning. This business alone can double our industry and company.

• I believe this is the most direct, most specific opportunity, and the fastest growing opportunity, namely to rethink the public and private equity markets. There are only three types of private equity products: private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, although they are actually good investments, they all come with risks. I think the world we live in today is both safe and risky for private equity, and the same goes for the public markets.

• In the technology ecosystem, we naturally assume that companies like OpenAI or Spotify can maintain private status in the long term and raise equity. So why can't this be more widely applicable?

The following is the full speech, with some content omitted:

In the past fifteen years, asset management has grown 16 to 17 times, surpassing Apple and Microsoft

Good morning, I am Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo. It is the best time to formulate a five-year plan, where we have compressed all plans into a very short period of time, and all difficult decisions have been presented.

In terms of financial goals, we are discussing an average annual growth of 20% over the next five years, $15 per share, $21 billion in capital, but the only number I really want you to focus on is the $275 billion in initiation per year, which will be more important for our industry.

Looking back on the development of our industry, we have been very fortunate with a revenue growth of 7 times. But let me give you a more interesting piece of data – in 2008, all major companies in our industry had assets under management of $40 billion each, with $35 billion in private equity and $5 billion in other assets, which are credits.

By the end of 2023, our managed assets have increased to $650 billion, our assets have grown 16 to 17 times, no financial services company can grow like this, in fact, our growth has exceeded Apple, exceeded Microsoft, and exceeded almost every growth company you can think of. Do you think we are lucky or smart?

The good luck of the past fifteen years has come to an end, we must adapt and change.

We are lucky, and we are smart because we positioned our business before the "favorable wind" arrived, driving a 7-fold increase in business revenue and a 16 to 17 times increase in total managed assets.

In 2008, every existing financial institution globally took a defensive strategy, we were lucky to establish a new financial institution in 2008, basically being in an "offensive mode" for these fifteen years. Another thing that happened is, as governments around the world adopted zero interest rate policies after the financial crisis and during the COVID-19 pandemic, all policyholders, retirees, and contractual counterparties seeking returns found us.

These two favorable trends not only drove us but also the entire industry. But we must also clearly realize that these favorable trends are no longer in existence. This is another thing we are truly working hard on at Apollo. Our industry has been so successful, our company has been so successful, how to make the organization win rather than just not lose, may have consumed most of our management time.

We woke up the team at 4:30 in the morning to hold a meeting, to demonstrate the need for sounding the alarm and doing things differently. We invited external speakers to warn everyone, we have cautionary stories, our goal is to win, and I have always emphasized that change is coming, the tailwind that has been driving our growth is no longer there, and there will be new trends.

If we think that continuing to repeat past practices will lead to success, that is wrong, we must adapt and change, this applies not only to us, but also to the entire industry.

How did we develop? We basically stayed ahead of these strong tailwinds by focusing on capabilities. Initially, the entire industry and our company were private equity, we were a small business, but faced huge opportunities.

Following the global financial crisis, crediting and Athene have been the main drivers of our growth in recent years. Many investors asked on Investor Day, why merge with Athene, what can be gained from it?

We have gained a lot from it, the entire business revolves around the retirement ecosystem, Athene holds an indispensable central position in our strategy, they basically led us into platform business and capital solutions business.

The second of the four huge opportunities - global industrial renaissance, huge capital needs of global large corporations.

Let's start with reality. We are a small asset management company managing assets over 700 billion, while today the four giants all exceed 10 trillion dollars. If we achieve great success, our business scale will double in five years, but we still won't have a place in the scale of large asset management.

I believe this is, to some extent, the most exciting and rewarding part of the strategy. We have four amazing opportunities ahead of us that can drive our business forward. If any one opportunity is executed well, it is enough to double our business. The task now is to focus and execute, and place ourselves in front of these four huge opportunities.

全球工业复兴、全球大公司巨大的资本需求。除了美国政府每年借款的数万亿之外，这些资金用于基础设施、能源转型、下一代数据和电力。这些项目周期长、复杂性高且需要创造力。在许多情况下，我们正在为大公司支持的财团提供融资，这些财团不希望资产出现在其资产负债表上，但希望获得其中的能力。

长期解决方案涵盖了各类资本成本，对于为自己提供短期资金的银行资产负债表来说并不真正合适，也不适合投资级市场的普通人。

在每个社会中，债务资本的来源只有两个选择：可以来自银行系统，或者可以来自投资市场，别无其他选择。在世界各地，银行被要求做得更少，投资者被要求做得更多。

当我们几年前为AB InBev进行了首次投资级融资时，许多人，包括在竞争对手都说，“4 billion美元是你们最后能做的4 billion美元”。然而，那是100 billion美元之前的事情，仅英特尔就有11 billion美元。这才刚刚开始，这是我们业务的一个长期趋势。

退休市场对固定收益具有大量需求

In terms of retirement, we are all getting older regardless of whether it's good or bad. As a society, we have done very poorly in retirement planning, these statistics are well known. The vast majority of Americans are not adequately prepared for retirement. Think about the world's largest group of retirees, and how they save. In the US, we have 12 to 13 trillion dollars in the 401K plan. They are mainly invested in daily liquidity.index fundsMostly the S&P index, which has been going on for fifty years.

Basically, we have 10 stocks in American retirement savings that account for 39% of the S&P 500 index, with four stocks determining 100% of the returns in recent years. Sometimes I joke that we attribute the entire American retirement to the performance of these stocks, which doesn't sound smart, and we are actively addressing this issue.$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$Every day we see new products, new methods, and new supplements, this is what's happening. From a retirement perspective, the most successful country in the Western world is Australia. Australia adopted a method called the retirement pension system forty years ago, a good way for investors to include private assets with public assets in their portfolios under appropriate supervision. The results after forty years of compound interest are simply astonishing. I believe we are at the forefront of reevaluating this opportunity, Athen (

Every day we see new products, new methods, and new supplements, this is what's happening. From a retirement perspective, the most successful country in the Western world is Australia. Australia adopted a method called the retirement pension system forty years ago, a good way for investors to include private assets with public assets in their portfolios under appropriate supervision. The results after forty years of compound interest are simply astonishing. I believe we are at the forefront of reevaluating this opportunity, Athen ($Apollo Global Management (APO.US)$The retirement business under the group Athene has just begun.

We focus on how to succeed, essentially leveraging existing products and industry dynamics and making them more optimized, which has been outstanding. We have not yet fully demonstrated its potential. In the coming years, you will see more because our competitors are just starting to think about the business we pioneered and led fifteen years ago.

We are in the early stages of developing this business, exploring product offerings and delivery methods. I am confident we will succeed. This is not just an opportunity for our Apollo, it is an opportunity for large companies, but not every alternative investment firm has such an opportunity.

The reason I know we will succeed is because I see the most sophisticated individual investors, namely family offices. Family offices now have over 50% in private equity assets. For us, family offices are just institutions. They are typically not guided by advisors, other benchmarks, or restrictions, but by common sense and the principles of risk-return. This is a huge market. They are not constrained by benchmarks; they actually show the future to institutions.

Let me move to the bottom of the pyramid, the mass affluent. We do not believe Apollo or our peers will directly serve the mass affluent market. These people are hard to reach, they have established relationships, usually well-served, typically not served by individual advisors, and do not receive advice in very limited circumstances.

This does not mean that they will not have private equity assets. Whether working with us or with our peer capital research global investors, I believe this mass affluent market will be served by its existing asset managers and advisor relationships, and the product mix will change.

In our industry, especially our apollo global management company, will become suppliers in the high net worth market. It is very rewarding to talk with high net worth investors, as you can clearly know your position when you leave, and sometimes even leave with an order, which is indeed satisfying.

Looking back at the retirement market, this is a huge opportunity, with a great demand for fixed income, especially from individual investors with a large demand for alternative investments, fixed income, and other opportunities, which is just the beginning.

Rethinking the public and private placement markets, both are safe and risky.

What excites me the most is that I think this is the most direct, most concrete, and fastest growing opportunity, that is, to rethink the public and private placement markets. Let's face it, for those who have been working in this industry for forty years, we inherently believe that private equity is risky, but the public market is safe, because that's how it was forty years ago. Private equity has only three products: private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, although they are actually good investments, they all carry risks.

The public market has 8,000 listed companies, with diversified investment portfolios of stocks and bonds. But what if the public market is both safe and risky? We are not concerned about the fluctuations of 20-30% in a day for nvidia, there is a lot of equity volatility, but we do not see this as a risk. However, a slight deviation in the private equity market makes us irrational. I believe that the world we live in today is both safe and risky for private equity, and the public market is no different.

The existence of credit rating agencies actually tells investors that some things in the private and public markets have the same credit quality, so investors can make decisions about liquidity or illiquidity, and clearly weigh risks and returns. Everything in the investment grade in the public market will exist in the private placement market.

We will start market making, and once we start, I believe others will follow. The 8,000 listed companies that used to make up the diversified investment portfolio have now been reduced to 4,000, with fewer than 100 companies going public each year and more than 100 companies privatizing each year.

In the technology ecosystem, we naturally assume that companies like OpenAI or Spotify can maintain private status in the long term and raise equity. So why can't this be more widely applicable?

I believe in the future today we will talk about fixed income alternatives, but I believe in the future we will talk about stock alternatives. Today, there are so many passive elements in the market, and active management only accounts for a very small proportion. But more importantly, active management has actually failed. When a business has failed to outperform the index for over 90% of the time in twenty years, the market structure has indeed changed.

Especially for daily liquid funds, profitability becomes more difficult and requires more skills. For those who are able to do it, I salute you, because this is indeed a very difficult task. I believe that future investors will have private equity, not in a fund without leverage, active management may actually include active management of buying and selling stocks, but it may also be active management of company operations. Today we have a business we call 'mixed investment', and you will hear that it will double in size.

In our industry, these four major trends are not only available to Apollo, they are available to the entire industry, and I expect the whole industry to benefit from them. However, I believe we have positioned ourselves better to be able to benefit accurately from market changes.

We continue to evaluate our business, and we continue to move towards success through asset management scale and capital fundraising indicators. I believe that in the coming years, we will actually transition to thinking about the factors that truly constrain our business.

If we are right, we will have demand for private equity assets from retirees, demand for private equity assets from individuals, demand for private equity assets in the fixed income field from institutional clients, and eventually demand for their stock field. I believe that all these demands will create an industry that is twice or three times the size of today.

Editor/ping