Leon D. Black, the head of Apollo Global Management, said last year that his firm was “selling everything that’s not nailed down.â€
But this year, the private equity giant has more than $18 billion of fresh buying power.
Apollo has finished raising $17.5 billion from outside investors for its eighth private equity fund, the firm said on Thursday. It is the largest such fund the firm has ever raised, underscoring investors’ confidence that Apollo can find buying opportunities at a time when stock prices have risen drastically.
In addition to the outside capital, the fund includes $880 million from Apollo and affiliated investors, including employees of the firm, bringing the total to about $18.4 billion.
Apollo has raised the new money after a strong year for the private equity industry. With the Federal Reserve helping push stock prices higher, many private equity firms focused on selling their holdings to the investing public. In one closely watched deal, the Blackstone Group had increased the value of its investment in Hilton Worldwide Holdings by about $10 billion when it took the hotel company public in December.
Apollo was particularly active in selling its holdings. In the third quarter, the firm sold shares in the chemical maker LyondellBasell Industries, an investment that is expected to be the most profitable in the firm’s history, Marc Spilker, Apollo’s president, said on a conference call at the time.
Mr. Black, Apollo’s chief, remarked in April that it was a “fabulous environment to be selling.â€
Reaping big gains, private equity firms returned a record amount of net cash to investors last year, according to the placement agent Triago. Now, investors with Apollo are betting that the firm can replicate its past successes.
“We are very grateful for the overwhelming support for Fund VIII, which includes significant commitments from a preeminent global investor base consisting of both longstanding existing limited partners as well as many new investors,†Mr. Black said in a statement on Thursday.
It’s not just Apollo that has managed to attract a large amount of money for private equity deals. Over all, the industry raised $365 billion last year, Triago said in December, predicting that fund-raising would rise in 2014.
Apollo’s private equity business, which had assets under management of about $43 billion as of Sept. 30, focuses on buyouts, distressed investments and corporate carve-outs. The firm as a whole had assets under management of about $113 billion as of the end of September.
