“The opportunity for us is to continue to be a conduit for investors to take investment-grade type, safe yield opportunities from the banking system to the investment marketplace to maintain diversification of our financial system,” Marc Rowan, Apollo’s chief executive and co-founder, told the Financial Times.
Blackstone’s hedge-fund solutions arm, which manages $80 billion in private capital assets on behalf of institutional investors, may also consider buying some of the bank’s assets, the person said. Blackstone had no interest in buying the lender as a whole, they added. Apollo is also not seeking to acquire SVB in its entirety, but it may assist a group of top venture capital firms that are considering reviving parts of the bank’s client-facing operations.
Apollo was formed in 1990 by former executives of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert to acquire the junk bond portfolio of a failed California insurer, Executive Life. During the financial crisis the firm had almost exclusively focused on leveraged buyouts.