Marc Rowan

Ask Marc Rowan how he became a Wall Street titan and his answer may surprise you: He paid attention in class. He worked at Drexel Burnham under mentor Mike Milken, and when the firm imploded in 1990, he, Black, and Josh Harris famously formed Apollo. Their first deal consisted of buying and rescuing a failed insurer called Executive Life. “It was as if I was the only kid in school who’d even cracked the book and could raise their hand and answer the question. Thanks to the actuarial studies, I knew more than anyone else about insurance risks,” he told Fortune earlier this year. Rowan has supercharged performance at the alternative asset manager by leaning into the profitable field of private credit. He’s pledging to raise Apollo’s assets under management (AUM) two-thirds by 2026 to $1 trillion, and to nearly double income that’s already at running at record levels. “I don’t think I’ve discovered fire,” Rowan told Fortune’s Shawn Tully. “I think we’re just logically looking at trends, and we’ve picked a really, really big market that’s got the best future in the world of credit.”