Marc Rowan

But eventually, the Credit Line Bank, as 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, Francois Pinot.

Interesting.

And Francois Pinot does not understand that he is not buying an investment firm.

He believes he is buying Samsonite and Culligan and Vale Resorts, because after all, he's an industrialist.

And so the movie rights to the first meeting with Francois Pinot are also amazing.

But as luck would have it, we had a good enough track record that over time, we not only made Pinot lots of money,

but began to diversify our business to U.S.

and European and international institutions.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

But it was a pretty contained history for about 18 years.

So if I start backwards a little bit, the firm today is a little bit over a trillion dollars in assets under management, which is just a measure.

And it is in two businesses.

It's in the retirement services business, and it's in the asset management business.

And if you look at the assets under management, 80% of the assets under management are credit, and the vast majority of that is investment grade.

And the other $200 billion, or 20% of it, half of it is what we call hybrid equity, partner-like equity, and half of it is traditional private equity in a fund structure.

It's a totally different makeup of a business than people expect when they say, well, Apollo's a private equity firm.

Well, actually, Apollo's mostly an investment-grade credit firm.

And I think what we appreciate is when you are a small firm, you can be a good deal shop.