New details reveal Leon Black’s friendship with – Business News
To the Greeks, Apollo was a god of many issues, not least amongst them prophecy. What higher identify, then, for a Wall Street firm free to invest in almost something based mostly on what it sees forward?
Apollo Global Management turned immensely profitable thanks largely to its sensible and pushed founder, Leon Black. But someplace alongside the road, foresight failed him and, blind to what ought to have been apparent even to lesser mortals, he turned the protagonist of a fashionable Greek tragedy.
In “Money to Burn” (Portfolio Books) the author and former investment banker William D. Cohan tackles this epic story.
Jeffrey Epstein (left) and Leon Black (proper) Arthapicture – stock.adobe.com
To clarify the rise and fall of Leon, the writer first tells the story of how the firm Drexel Burnham Lambert rose to preeminence, after which how its ingenious alumni and improvements colonized the financial system after its chapter in 1990. Drexel’s collapse got here after it pleaded guilty to securities violations; the firm’s famend junk-bond king, Michael Milken, later did likewise.
But Milken’s insight — that lending to riskier company prospects might pay massive — was by no means refuted. Thus, when Black and different Drexel veterans launched Apollo, they began out by shopping for a giant, distressed portfolio of the junk bonds that Drexel had pioneered. Apollo equally feasted on bargains during the financial disaster.
Milken Institute Chairman Michael Milken speaks during the twenty ninth annual Milken Institute Global Conference on the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday, May 4, 2026. AFP by way of Getty Images
The firm has had winners and losers through the years however total has carried out exceedingly properly. Today it’s a financial colossus that, amongst different issues, annuitizes retirement financial savings to fund its lending. Leon and his chief associates, Marc Rowan and Josh Harris, whom he generously made companions, turned billionaires.
If “Money to Burn” is a success story, it is usually a story concerning the hazards of new fortunes, which embrace large public failure and the concern of betrayal even by lovers and close associates. Leon’s father, Eli, was a tycoon in his own proper, however a disastrous merger (basically, the acquisition of the Chiquita banana business) might have been the impetus, in 1975, for the overworked CEO of United Brands to leap from the forty fourth flooring of what was then the Pan Am Building.
Leon was decided to redeem this disaster by means of success of such magnitude that his father’s failure would pale as compared. Like his father, Leon too made disastrous acquisitions, however Leon’s worst had been human, and the nastiest by far was a sensible however creepy financial guru by the identify of Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein attends the launch of Radar Magazine at Hotel QT on Wednesday, May 18, 2005, in New York City. Patrick McMullan by way of Getty Images
Leon was launched to that infamous cultivator of males and abuser of girls in 1996, and Epstein would come to serve on the board of Leon’s household basis. Epstein didn’t have a great deal of formal education however appears to have been an ready all-around fixer with a explicit expertise for the arcane tax points that afflict the rich. Leon Black, as somebody making a whole lot of thousands and thousands a yr, had such issues, and evidently Epstein was capable of help in ways in which even well-known specialists couldn’t. Epstein additionally suggested on Black’s seemingly disorganized household workplace.
For these companies, Epstein charged a lot, and “Money to Burn” quotes emails during which he portrays himself as a loyal however martyred good friend from whom Leon withholds thousands and thousands in well-deserved charges. “To help out,” Epstein wrote, “[I’m] keenly aware of your current cash position, so I will consider an in-kind payment — real estate (Miami), art, financing of my new plane (allows you to spread over years).”
Leon contended he didn’t actually know how a lot he paid Epstein through the years. They labored largely on a handshake and even giant sums had been simply rounding errors to a man of his wealth. But the Dechert law firm, employed to analyze, reported that the full was $158 million, a determine so high that some people puzzled if the money was for one thing much less innocuous than tax advice.
Guzel Ganieva attends the celebration of the revealing of luxurious vodka Absolut Elyx in New York on May 13, 2013. David X Prutting/BFA / Shutterstock
Epstein was a convicted intercourse offender, of course, who died in custody in 2019 awaiting trial on additional such expenses. His death was ruled a suicide. And Leon was, the writer says, “the scion of ten generations of Orthodox rabbis.” Dechert discovered no proof that Leon or Apollo was concerned with Epstein’s felony actions. But Cohan describes himself as “incredulous” that Leon “would have such a loosey-goosey fee arrangement with Epstein,” particularly since Leon was “reputedly one of the world’s toughest negotiators.”
On Jan. 25, 2021, the day Dechert’s report got here out, Leon introduced a succession plan during which he would stay chairman whereas giving the CEO function to Rowan later within the yr. But on March 17, Apollo’s tsar was publicly accused by former Russian model Guzel Ganieva of harassment, coercion and abuse. In a later lawsuit, the guide says, she accused him of rape.
Days later, Leon resigned from Apollo altogether, although he remained the most important shareholder within the firm that was his life’s work. Back in 2015 he had worn a wire to a collection of conferences with Ganieva during which she demanded $100 million for her silence. The erstwhile lovers settled on $21 million unfold over 15 years, and Leon had been paying. After Ganieva signed the nondisclosure settlement, based on the guide, they each sighed, she laughed, after which she mentioned: “You know I still love you very much.”
Ganieva and Black sued each other, to no explicit avail, however their battle helped wreck Black’s relationship with Harris, whom he accused of becoming a member of her in a conspiracy to “depose him and take over as CEO.” Harris, in the meantime, is quoted denying any conspiracy, saying: “It was just made up.”
Moderator and Vanity Fair particular correspondent William D. Cohan speaks onstage during the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. Getty Images
The story of a massive shot’s downfall as a consequence of his own flaws is a basic tragedy. But there’s a second tragedy right here: that the writer allowed his prodigious excavations to undermine his judgement about what to incorporate, leading to a considerably plodding work that’s too long by a fifth or more. In a sense the guide is a homicide thriller, the thriller being: Who killed all of the editors at his publishing home? How else, in addition to foul play, to clarify this irritating marriage of spectacular analysis and shambolic narrative?
Yet for readers who can hack their method by means of — the primary textual content is a few 600 pages — there are appreciable rewards. The transcribed exchanges between Black and Ganieva and the emails from Epstein make us witnesses to the greed that thrives even on the periphery of Wall Street avarice. Such a story, furthermore, is rarely nearly money, because the protagonists don’t simply stop after the primary billion. The relentless work, the curiosity and the iron guts of Apollo’s principals, all of them already wealthy past imagining but nonetheless pushed, emerge vividly on these pages.
To his credit, and regardless of Apollo’s cooperation, Cohan unabashedly delves into the firm’s worst hours — equivalent to its vampirish acquisition of Noranda Aluminum and its efforts to guard its investment in Caesar’s during the on line casino empire’s chapter. “Apollo created a race to an ethical bottom on Wall Street,” one fund supervisor tells the writer. “Beyond sleazy, and immediately copied by previously ethical firms.”
Cohan doesn’t straight deal with the bigger query of whether or not companies like Apollo are socially helpful or parasitic. At their worst, to be sure, they’ve bled their targets, burdened them with debt, and left staff, lenders and communities to undergo the results.
Yet non-public equity may also strengthen firms by unsentimentally slicing prices and enhancing management whereas delivering robust returns for institutional traders (together with pension funds). Like vultures, they’ve their place within the financial ecosystem. Apollo even rescued Hostess, the maker of such beloved treats as Twinkies and Devil Dogs, from chapter, reserving massive features within the course of. Who says Leon Black and company lacked a social conscience?
