Apollo Global Management on Monday announced a strategic partnership with UK-based asset manager Schroders, the private equity firm’s latest effort to bring private market investments to everyday investors.
The collaboration, which the $908 billion manager hopes will deliver “multi-billion-dollar annual flows,” will initially roll out products that blend public- and private-debt investments made by Schroders, its private investing arm Schroders Capital and Apollo, according to a statement. The first offering is expected to launch later this year, targeting high-net-worth clients in the UK, a market where Schroders is well established.
The partnership will extend to the US retirement market in the second quarter of 2026 with the launch of a Collective Investment Trust dedicated to the defined contribution pension market.
A spokesman for Apollo would not comment on how the trust will be structured or the investments it will make. But a white paper produced by Apollo in August described a CIT as a structure in which illiquid assets are blended with a “liquidity sleeve” that invests in assets such as government treasuries or investment-grade bonds, which can be liquidated to fulfill redemption requests from investors.
These liquid assets also provide a benchmark against which the private portion of the portfolio can be valued at the end of each day, a feature Apollo Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan views as a “big deal” for private equity in its attempts to win retail capital, he said at Monday’s earnings call.
Most private market funds report net asset value on a quarterly basis, but Apollo is in the process of transitioning its offerings—including its high-grade credit business—to provide daily NAV updates for market pricing, Rowan said on the earnings call. The ability to provide daily liquidity is also vital, he added, even as many in the private market industry have “spoken against” it.
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Speaking last November on Apollo’s Q3 earnings call, Rowan said that private equity firms will have to adjust to the fact that retail customers “are not likely to buy 100% private products” due to a lack of knowledge about how they work or concerns about their illiquid nature.
“The work we’re doing around transparency and liquidity, which some in our industry oppose because we’re shining a light on the assets, the quality, the ratings and the pricing ... this is what gives you entry to traditional asset managers,” Rowan said.
The largest listed managers have all looked down market over the past two years into the retail channel. Blackstone, which was the first to target the private wealth channel back in 2011, in October launched a unit dedicated to developing products targeting the DC pension channel.
In January 2025, KKR hired its first head of DC, Melissa Kivett, who joined from annuity provider TIAA.
Each firm is taking a different approach to constructing products for the retail market, which will ideally perform better than their public market equivalents, while being more transparent, cheaper and more liquid than traditional private equity. It is far from clear which structure—whether it be target-dated funds, exchange-traded funds or some other structure—will become the dominant conduit of bridging private assets with 401(k) money.
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Rowan said he expects traditional asset managers, such as Vanguard and Fidelity, to become among “the largest buyers” of private market products. Apollo has already been a product supplier to these managers, but the next step to deepen ties with them is to jointly create investment products tailored to individuals.
The alliance with Schroders is just the firm’s latest effort to cater to the growing demand for private market exposures from everyday American retirement savers.
Last February, Apollo partnered with State Street to launch PRIV, an investment-grade private credit ETF that features daily liquidity. The fund has grown to nearly $700 million in assets.
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