阿波罗计划投资500亿美元

On Wednesday, March 25, a week after the Federal Reserve had stepped in to stabilize credit markets, J.P. Morgan banker Keith Canton called Reed Rayman, an Apollo private equity partner who focuses on technology investments, including e-commerce and online travel.

Canton knew that Barry Diller, the chairman of Expedia, had already drawn down his company’s revolving credit lines. Now Diller, who had forced out Expedia’s CEO and CFO in December over strategy disagreements, needed even more cash to make good on a possible $5 billion in refunds the online travel company owed to customers.

在电话里，Canton告诉Rayman，Expedia需要一份10天内高达5亿美元的条款清单。Rayman在家里工作，有两个小孩，没有孩子照顾。坎顿认为阿波罗会为这家公司融资，尽管他从未投资过这家公司。

两天后，为摩根大通（J.P.Morgan）管理私人资本市场的Canton再次致电Rayman。Cimpress的首席财务官肖恩•奎恩（Sean Quinn）与迪勒的问题不同，他没有流动性问题，但他需要资金，这样公司就不会被迫违反与多家银行签订的贷款合同条款。雷曼是摄影公司Shutterfly的董事会成员，他对Cimpress很了解。这家公司拥有Vistaprint，拥有1500万全球小企业客户，是一家纯粹的阿波罗公司。遛狗者使用这种低成本的打印机将名片放在当地食客的柜台上，餐馆也有Cimpress打印菜单，可以随顾客的外卖单寄回家。

Rayman和James Zelter在过去13年里把阿波罗的信贷业务从200亿美元增加到2400亿美元，他们认为他们可以用一个名为“混合价值”的基金的资金为那些不想放弃控制权的公司提供部分融资。该基金本质上是一半是私募股权，一半是信贷，这是上次危机期间不存在的选择。凭借混合价值，以控制投资而闻名的阿波罗无法获得控制权。但企业可以获得定制融资和战略合作伙伴。

Apollo quickly assigned staffers from its private equity, credit, and Hybrid Value teams to the Expedia deal. Over the weekend of April 21 and 22, David Sambur, co-lead of private equity at Apollo, and Greg Mondre, co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake, decided to partner on a $1.2 billion deal for perpetual preferred stock. Apollo was also an anchor investor in a follow-on bond deal.

It’s an unusual partnership. Silicon Valley–based Silver Lake, which recently invested billions in Twitter, Alphabet’s Waymo, and other companies, is a growth investor in technology and other sectors. Apollo is a hard-core value investor. Mondre and Sambur now sit on Expedia’s board.

阿波罗,另一方面,是符合逻辑的选择finance Cimpress, whose small business customers were shuttered. Cimpress CFO Quinn had been early in preparing the company for a Covid-19 shutdown. In late February he talked daily to the CEO of Cimpress’s business in Italy, where, by the last weekend of the month, demand had dropped by 80 percent. Cimpress, which had $2.8 billion in annual revenues, had large revolving credit lines to tap, but Quinn hoped to get ahead of debt covenants and make sure the company had flexibility with lenders so it could play offense against weaker competitors.

随着Cimpress股价的波动，奎因不想稀释股东。该公司也不希望一家贷款机构占据董事会席位。相反，在4月28日，该公司最终确定了一张3亿美元的票据的细节，票面利率为12%，并附有该公司4%股权的认股权证。尽管随着交易的进行，高收益债券市场已经重新开放，但奎因认为，它们随时都可能关闭，并喜欢与阿波罗达成交易的确定性。至于阿波罗（Apollo），它将认购保护权交易为认股权证，这是该公司在传统债券交易中无法获得的。

所有的事情都是通过Zoom这样的应用程序远程完成的，没有人知道Quinn在使用Covid-19。3月14日，他第一次给坎顿打电话的那天，他在马萨诸塞州雷丁家附近的一家意大利小餐馆吃饭。他和其他七个食客很快感染了病毒。

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The villains in the last crisiswere the banks. This time the villain is the virus.

从经济上讲，英雄们也会有所不同。

在3月份之前的11年里，市场一直相对平静，只有几个明显的例外。但3月份是华尔街结构发生根本性转变的第一次真正考验，因为资产管理公司——特别是另类信贷机构——已经填补了银行在2008年之后留下的空白。

2008年,沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett) compani的救世主es facing crisis, famously lending money to Goldman Sachs and other big banks as they faced extinction. At the time, Apollo couldn’t do those deals: It was still primarily a distressed investor, and Zelter was at the very beginning of building out the firm’s credit arm.

But this time around, it has been firms like Apollo that are extending lifelines to companies like Expedia and Cimpress, as well as to businesses as varied as United Airlines and grocery store Albertson’s. Zelter had been preparing for this crisis for a decade, building capabilities across the board, including capital solutions, distressed, and large-cap loan origination.

功劳改变了阿波罗的形象。该公司绝大多数的信用状况良好，这意味着它是健康的。“我们一直被称为陷入困境或压力重重的公司，[但]我们在信贷方面所做的80%并不是这样。这是资本解决方案，它为大公司提供资金，帮助他们应对压力重重的局面或成长。”阿波罗创始人Josh Harris在第一季度财报电话会议上说。

(Apollo isn’t alone in being able to write big checks. Blackstone, Bain Capital, Sixth Street Partners, Silver Lake, and other firms also have plenty to invest.)

“Expedia是一家投资级公司，是美国在危机中取得巨大成功的典范。我们作为一家私募股权投资公司而闻名，”泽特在接受《华尔街日报》采访时说亚博赞助欧冠. “但这里有一个比较：沃伦•巴菲特（Warren Buffett）对高盛（Goldman）、美国银行（BofA）和通用电气（GE）的做法——我们为一些伟大的投资级公司提供了同样的服务。”

Apollo spent approximately $50 billion, mostly from the credit business, in the first quarter of this year. Troubled companies had access to other sources of cash, but many didn’t want the restrictions that might come with government loans and many weren’t large enough, or didn’t have good enough credit, to qualify. Others could have tapped high-yield markets once they opened up again in April, but many were willing to pay the higher rates that come with private credit deals for a chance at negotiating terms and for the certainty that a deal would close.

In contrast to some competitors that have opened their wallets more slowly, Apollo, with its aggressive layout of cash, is betting on the macro environment and on governments not abandoning markets. The firm’s house view is a rosy one: People will quickly return to normal patterns, such as staying in hotels, hopping on planes, and eating in restaurants, Apollo believes.

Zelter points out that, unlike in 2008, markets have moved at a dizzying speed and opportunities have popped up and then disappeared. From an investing perspective, Zelter considers Phase I to have been the early dislocation that took place in March, when markets were in free fall as everyone raced for cash to prepare for a doomsday scenario.

March saw Apollo quickly pour money into high-quality credit securities whose prices were cut in half as buyers vanished. Zelter and John Zito, co-head of global corporate credit, had created the strategy — called Accord — in 2015 to invest in opportunities that they thought would arise because of market structure problems. “Given the exponential growth in credit markets and in passive [investing] since the financial crisis, when there’s volatility like we saw in March, there’s no natural buyer of the asset class,” says Zelter.

In March, Apollo’s third Accord fund still had most of its cash available when markets started south. The firm called capital and was fully invested within seven days.

“这与流动性驱动的混乱有关。如果你回到3月的黑暗时期，我们很快就撤资并执行了死刑。这个机会已经过去了，至少现在是这样。

Phase II, according to Zelter, was in April, when the capital markets hadn’t yet bounced back but governments around the world had signaled support for markets. It was the time for capital solutions for good companies having temporary problems, he says. That too is over.

Zelter说，五月初开始的第三阶段令人苦恼。企业现在必须走出经济低迷，而且并非所有企业都能成功。他认为，这就是现在的市场。

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华尔街转型的批评者从银行贷款到资产管理贷款，人们都曾大声预言，替代品公司将在下一次危机中陷入瘫痪。

阿波罗已经证明他们错了。

“We quickly became one of the largest buyers in investment-grade; we were active in high-yield, loans. We had capital that we could draw down. We were on offense on day one,” says Zelter.

现在这家公司需要补充资金。它的目标是通过信贷筹集200亿美元，包括资本解决方案、混合价值、错位、发起、压力和困境。

Apollo will have to gather a lot of that money over Zoom. Although cities, including New York, have slowly been opening up, asset managers and investors haven’t been rushing to return to their offices. Many top executives have found working remotely, even with kids talking to them from the sidelines of tough Zoom negotiations, to be more productive.

The virtual meetings are working. When Apollo approached Christian Hensley, senior managing director of equities and credit at the Investment Management Corp. of Ontario, about putting money into Accord, the Canadian pension manger was ready. Despite having its entire staff working from home since mid-March, IMCO ponied up $250 million. The company wasn’t alone.

Later that month, just as it was remotely putting the remaining cash from Accord III to work, Apollo started to raise an additional tranche of the fund.

The haul: $1.75 billion in eight weeks.