Apollo was founded in 1990 out of the ashes of Drexel's collapse, starting with $800 million from the French government bank Credit Lyonnais and growing to manage $6 billion of the bank's money by the end of that first year.
Rowan recounts Apollo's origin story: unemployed after Drexel's demise, a cold call from Credit Lyonnais led to an $800 million mandate that ballooned to $6 billion within a year. ✦ AI generated
Marc Rowan · a16z Podcast · 2026-05-27 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 6:39
“Can you kind of talk through the origin story of of starting the firm?”
A few months later, we left with $800 million of the government of France's money through the Credit Lyonnais Bank with a group of people who had never invested money before from an institution that was not an investor. And by the end of the year, we had $6 billion of the bank's money.
verbatim transcript · starts at 6:39
6:39>> asking whether we would be interested in starting an M&A boutique >> under the mighty credit banner. What a terrible idea in 1990. There is no M&A. There's total loss of confidence. And I think as a throwaway line, one of us said, "But this would be an awesome time to deploy capital." M >> and the gentleman said, "There's a guy in Paris. He thinks exactly the way you
7:03think. Why don't I set up a meeting?" >> A few months later, we left with $800 million of the government of France's money through the Credit Lea Bank >> with a group of people who had never invested money for before from an institution that was not an investor. And by the end of the year, we had $6 billion of the bank's money. >> Wow. And in 1990, no one had $6 billion.
7:27>> Wow. >> And we went on to become the largest profit center of the credit line bank. >> For the next few years, we earned them regularly $3 billion plus a year. We were very, very popular in Paris despite speaking nothing other than restaurant French. Uh the movie rights to this story of us talking past each other are just off the charts. >> Yeah, totally. Uh but eventually the
7:50credit line bank has the government bank of France goes out of business from supporting French industry. >> Interesting. >> And in a desperate attempt to maintain its capital base, it sells its most profitable investment Apollo >> to its largest client, Franu Pino. >> Interesting. It really is. >> And France Pino does not understand that he is not buying an investment firm. He believes he is buying Samsonite and
8:14Culligan and Veil Resorts because after all he's an industrialist and so the movie rights to the first meeting with Francois Pino are also amazing >> hilarious >> uh but as luck would have it we had a good enough track record that over time we not only made Pino lots of money but [snorts] began to diversify our business to US and European and international institutions and the rest as they say is
8:39is history but it was a pretty contained history for about 18 years. >> Totally. And you know, I think people still, you know, incorrectly, I would argue, you know, refer to Apollo as a private equity firm, but you know, you I think more than anybody have really kind of transformed the business into a, you know, retirement services in a company and an alter, you know, large alternative asset management business. I