(Bloomberg) -- Apollo Global Management Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan said he expects larger mega-deals from private credit providers could happen in the coming year amid a more business-friendly regulatory environment and growing investor demand.
“It will not surprise me this year to see your first $15 or $20 billion deal in the private markets,” Rowan said on Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference in New York. “I think it’s coming.”
The CEO pointed to Apollo’s $11 billion deal with Intel Corp. this year to fund a plant in Ireland as a model. Appetite from other insurers for long-term assets that have elements of debt and equity gave Apollo the confidence to agree to such large deals, Rowan said.
More non-technology companies are likely to follow the example of firms like Stripe, OpenAI and Spotify that have stayed private for longer, Rowan said. This in turn will create opportunities for investors to invest in so-called hybrid assets that fall between credit and equity, he added.
“I think we’re going to end up with a whole universe of companies that are private,” he said. “We will own equity that is private rather than private equity.”
Apollo has outlined its ambitions to double its size by 2029 and cited its hybrid equity products and high-grade credit as key components of its growth. Rowan has been highlighting the convergence of the public and private markets in recent months, with the latter being more actively traded on Wall Street as private market participants look for liquidity.
Rowan said that adding leverage to investment-grade private assets “could be the single biggest opportunity that exists for firms like ours,” adding that “the vast, vast majority of our principal capital is invested in this hybrid area.”
Rowan said the strategy offers higher returns with reduced volatility, an approach he thinks is effective for both institutional and individual investors.
“The use cases are metastasizing every day for hybrid,” he said. “Almost every public equity mutual fund has a 15% sleeve for private. They’ve historically done a lot of it in technology. It will not surprise me to see a portion of the public mutual funds portfolio allocated to these private assets.”
Apollo has been targeting wealthy individuals in a bid to increase its assets, which have soared to $733 billion, while also pitching bigger allocations of private assets into retirement accounts.
The New York-based asset manager has been signing jumbo checks with high-grade companies as part of its expanding credit origination business, while on the private equity side, the firm is readying a number of funds for early next year, including a $25 billion buyout fund.
Rowan previously said the firm’s biggest constraint will be finding enough opportunities to invest.
At the conference on Wednesday, Rowan said he expects a more favorable regulatory environment for firms like his under president-elect Donald Trump.
“I could not envision a more hostile environment to private capital than the last four years,” he said, referring to the administration of President Joe Biden. “Enough said.”
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