Apollo Global Management Confirms Exit From Asia Real Estate Equity Strategy

Apollo Global Management, which deployed $15.7 billion into real assets globally in 2022, has walked away from its equity strategy for Asian real estate after property investment deals in the region fell by more than a third during the first three quarters of 2023.

“Last fall we began an orderly wind down our Asia real estate equity fund business, which has resulted in certain personnel changes,” a company representative informed Mingtiandi by email. “We continue to lean into real estate debt and special situations in Asia, which align with our scaled pools of global capital.”

With its equity strategy for Asia real estate, which focused on special situations, having shut down, Apollo is pointing to its growth in other markets. The news of Apollo’s transition in the region had been reported earlier by PERE.

“Our global real estate business, with close to $70 billion of AUM, was very active in the U.S. and Europe in 2023, having completed over $9 billion of loan originations as well as launching of our U.S. non-traded REIT, Apollo Realty Income Solutions,” the company representative said.

Team Departs

Government records show four officers licensed by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission having left Apollo’s Asia operation at the end of 2023, including partner Ian Cohen and Frank Hu, a principal with the firm. Also departing were Ruixin Jian and Chongren Zhang, an associate who had joined the company from Morgan Stanley in 2021.

Cohen had been with the company since 2012, including leading Apollo’s most significant move on the real estate credit side in the region when the company acquired a 50 percent stake in Australian real estate credit specialist Maxcap for a reported A$1 billion (now $670 million). That 2021 deal has been described as the largest ever in Australia’s non-bank lending industry.

Cohen’s team also engineered Apollo’s joint $235 million investment with Goldman Sachs in Bangkok’s MahaNakhon Tower in 2017. The partners made a $320 million exit from that deal one year later.

Moderating Head Count

In October 2022, Apollo had been promoting its expansion in Asia Pacific when it moved into a new office in Mumbai. In the company’s third quarter earnings call, Apollo chief financial officer Martin Kelly said the company is moderating its head count growth globally, while building its team in India, which recently surpassed 500 employees.

In the first three quarters of 2023, Apollo achieved $2.27 billion in net income attributable to common stockholders, after declaring a $2.60 billion loss for the same period a year earlier.

During the first three quarter of 2023, investors completed approximately $95 billion in trades of income-earning real estate asset in Asia Pacific, which was down 37 percent from the total during the same period a year earlier, according to MSCI Real Assets.