Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Apollo Global Management drew in nearly $30bn of net inflows during the final three months of last year, pushing its assets under management to a new high of $938bn and helping bolster its earnings.
The New York-headquartered insurance and asset management group said it had a record quarter for deployment of capital, which helped lift the management fees it charges on its funds.
So-called fee-related earnings rose 25 per cent from a year earlier to $690mn, eclipsing Wall Street expectations, according to analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha. That was boosted by a 27 per cent jump in management fees and a 41 per cent rise in the fees it earns by originating and syndicating deals through its capital markets arm.
“Apollo’s fourth-quarter results capped a year of exceptional execution,” chief executive Marc Rowan said in a statement. “Whether financing the industrial renaissance, advancing retirement solutions or enabling new buyers to access private markets at scale, we are at the forefront of building the next generation of financial services.”
Net income fell 55 per cent from a year earlier to $660mn, or $1.07 a share, missing Wall Street forecasts. The company also announced that its board had approved a $4bn share buyback plan.
Annuity sales to everyday investors moderated from last year’s heights, with Apollo’s Athene insurance unit reporting $34bn of inflows through retail annuity sales in the year, including $7.3bn in the final three months of the year. That was down from $36bn in 2024.
The insurance unit has instead turned to the funding agreement market to pull in tens of billions of dollars’ worth of relatively cheap capital it can use to invest across credit markets.
Athene reported that it had raised $35.4bn of capital in 2025 through the funding agreements, including $2.8bn in the fourth quarter, up from $29bn in 2024.
The company said the spread income it earns from managing insurance assets had improved from a year earlier, rising 3 per cent to $865mn in the quarter.
Investors will be waiting to hear from Rowan later on Monday as they attempt to glean a better sense of Apollo’s exposure to the software industry, which has been caught up in a broad-based sell-off this year.
The Financial Times last year reported that Apollo had cut its exposure to software loans as it grew increasingly bearish about the sector’s prospects in the wake of rapid inroads made by AI, with Rowan saying on Apollo’s last earnings call that the firm was in “risk reduction mode”.
Shares in the company have fallen 8 per cent this year, trailing the benchmark S&P 500 index but ahead of rivals including Ares Management, Blackstone, Blue Owl and KKR.