Apollo formed an Asia Pacific credit strategy in a strategic partnership with Hostplus, one of the five largest superannuation funds in Australia. The new strategy launches with $1.25 billion in assets, following an inaugural raise that includes a $500 million anchor commitment from Hostplus alongside Apollo’s internal and affiliated insurance balance sheets. The dedicated strategy brings Apollo’s global credit platform together with local expertise to capitalize on growing demand for private credit across Asia Pacific, providing companies and sponsors with flexible and bespoke solutions.
The Asia Pacific credit strategy is designed to leverage Apollo’s credit expertise and differentiated asset origination to source high-quality opportunities across the yield spectrum. Today, Apollo has more than $10 billion of assets under management invested in the region and a growing team of nearly 60 investment professionals. Last year, Apollo appointed partner Matt Michelini as head of Asia Pacific, now based in Singapore, and hired an Australia-based credit team led by partner Anthony Hermann, among other key additions.
“This strategy is a natural extension of our global credit capabilities and reflects growing demand in the region for flexible, expedient capital solutions from non-bank lenders,” Jim Zelter, co-president of Apollo, said. “We are pleased to launch Asia Pacific Credit in alignment with our long-term partners at Hostplus, who share in our disciplined investment philosophy.”
“We are delighted to extend our 13-year relationship with Apollo, one of the leading global credit managers,” David Elia, CEO of Hostplus, said. “This launch is part of our broader investment strategy to help to further diversify our investment portfolio to protect and grow our member investments over the long-term. Credit plays an important role in our strategic asset allocation to ensure we spread investment risk and help stabilize our investment portfolio, smoothing the ups and downs of investment market cycles.”
“We continue to make tremendous progress building our team and capabilities across Asia Pacific to serve the growing credit needs of companies in the region,” Matt Michelini, partner and head of Asia Pacific for Apollo, said. “This new strategy seamlessly combines our global capital base and ability to provide large-scale, differentiated, cross capital structure solutions with local expertise and origination.”
The Asia Pacific Credit Strategy will focus geographically on Australia, India, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, with select deployment across other parts of the region. Launch of the strategy follows increasing investment activity in APAC for Apollo.
