William Cohan reveals how Apollo and Leon Black ushered in the private credit boom amid fortune and scandal

All right, hello, and welcome to Cloud 9 Fin. My name is Max Fruymus, and the global editor of Lev Fin and Distressed here at 9 Fin. And today I'm here with William D. Cohen, former investment banker, prominent financial journalist, and author of New York Times best-selling books, including House of Cards, Last Tycoons. And as of 2021, he added entrepreneur to his list of prestigious titles, The Founder of Puck News, which is, if you don't already read it, a brilliant digital news outlet producing smart journalism on Wall Street Hollywood, Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley, and more. And we're here today to talk about his eighth book, Money to Burn, The Unbarnished Truth about Leon Black, Apollo, and the rise of a new Wall Street. Welcome, Bill. Thank you, Max. Great to be here with you. Likewise, you're also a personal hero of mine. I appreciate all the coverage that you do of Apollo and Wall Street in general. And first, you know, I want to start with questions for you. You're very present in all of your books. You wrap narrative in a lot of first person as you, you bring us inside the homes and lives of your famous subjects, who are almost always willing to speak with you at length and what seems like a great portion of which could go on the record. So I would say, I would say like our virtual guide nuts through the land of luminaries and in the business world and oftentimes fall in giants. I want to know from your standpoint, how, how would you define success? My own or the people I write about your own, my own. How do you find, what lens are you writing through here as you, as you take us through these lands? Well, first of all, Max, thank you for the kind introduction and, you know, your book on Apollo and Caesars is of course legendary as well. Along with a, you know, a fellow former lozard investment. I wish you'd end up. You know, it's extremely wise of you to pick your co-author very intelligently, who's another, he's another brilliant writer and gets a lot of insight through having worked at Lozard like I did about Wall Street. So that is a seminal book about an incredible deal. One of the major fiascos in the Apollo narrative, which of course did not hurt its main sponsor, Mark Rowan, who is now the CEO of Apollo. So that is itself an interesting story that I tried to unpack in, in my new book, Money to Burn. But to answer your question, what is, I mean, I, yeah, first of all, I feel sort of very lucky to be able to do what I, what I do now. And I never would have predicted it would ever have ended and evolved into this. I mean, I, I started my career as a journalist. I went to Columbia Journalism School. My father, my late father, he just passed away at 97, you know, always urged me to give up journalism and to get my MBA and, and, and, and go to Wall Street or do something in business. And I finally took him up on that after a couple years in journalism, got my MBA at Columbia and then tried very hard to get a job first at the Wall Street Journal. And then it business week when it was not owned by Bloomberg at that time. And basically, I got shut down at both places. And meanwhile, it was May of 1987. And Wall Street was, you know, welcoming anybody could breathe with open arms. And so I was still breathing at that point. Got a job financing leverage buyouts at GE Capital. So only in America can you go from covering public schools in Wake County, North Carolina to financing leverage buyouts on Madison Avenue in New York. I don't know how that happened, but that sent me on my career on Wall Street. And so I thought that journalism was over for me. And I didn't really have a problem with that actually. It wasn't exactly a very lucrative profession back then. And so, you know, I was, or today, or today, it's better today than it ever was back then. I could regal you with some early 80s numbers about what it was like to be a daily journalist back then, especially when the people who owned the papers owned something with 65% EBITDA margins and were making fortunes. So I feel, you know, very blessed after I left Wall Street involuntarily, by the way, to, you know, to sort of stumble on the idea of writing a book about Lazard, some, you know, 10 years after I had left Lazard and ever thinking that I would ever write a book about Lazard, you know, I didn't take one note or anything. And what I found from the outset by some miracle is that basically everybody who worked there, you know, who I wanted to speak to about the firm and its history, et cetera, agreed to talk to me pretty much on the record. And so somehow that pattern has been repeated over and over again. And so I like taking a blank sheet of paper, starting at the beginning, no real preconceived notions and just telling what I hope will be a great story. And I think that with this book about Leon Black and Apollo, I mean, it just, I mean, as you well know, Max, it's an incredible story of this firm and it's never really been fully explicated. And, you know, people really haven't heard from Leon Black much. He's been very circumspect, but he, you know, opened himself up to me repeatedly with on the record interviews, there was no question that was off limits. So you can imagine what's in there. And so to me, success is getting people to talk to me, you know, I don't have to be in a power. So if they don't, there's nothing I could do. But getting most people to talk to me and letting, being able to tell, you know, this incredible story in long form, you know, my books are long, but I think that's what my readers like at this point. Yeah, you know, and I would say it is a unique and envious quality. I do recall there's a number of business journalists who are beat journalists such as myself who often say, I can't, I can't even get the time on the record yet over and over again. You do get, and I thought about this a lot like, why do people talk to you? All right. Because you have not only for this, for this story, Leon Black, Josh Harris, Mark Rowan, and previously Jack Welch, Jeff Emil, presumably Lloyd Blankline, Hank Paulson, John Corzine from Goldman, Bear Stearns, Lizarra executives, you know, probably Felix Rahat and Bruce Wasserstein who actually started the publication that gave me my start in New York in journalism, the deal. And, you know, there was, there's this snippet in money to burn here, where you mentioned Matt Garcia wrote a book about Leon Black's father, you like, you like black or Ellie, Ellie in the octopus and Leon tells you that he didn't cooperate with Garcia and the right in the book, quote, because the author was a socialist, unquote, you know, what, why do you think that everyone is willing to speak with you and really not necessarily anyone else, especially these towering executives? You know, my wife wonders that same question. I don't know, honestly, I think it might be, look, look, don't, I'm just saying this because Bob Wordwood also gets people to talk to him and maybe they feel like if they don't, that they somehow will be missing out or not getting their version of the story in. I'm not obviously anything remotely like a skilled, this Bob Woodward, but I think part of it is that I was a banker, an M&A banker for close to 20 years and went from, you know, being an associate at Lizarra to being a managing director at JP and group head at JP Morgan Chase. So maybe it's because they figure I, you know, and then been writing about Wall Street for the last, for longer than I was a banker for the last 22 years. So maybe they figure that. So that's like 40 years total. And I think they probably might figure that I know what I'm talking about. I know how to get to the bottom of the narrative, the story, you know, whether they participate or not. So I think, you know, PR 101, frankly, is to participate as you well know. I mean, that's just smart public relations and these guys are nothing if not smart. I mean, I found them each had very smart PR people, very skilled PR people at their side and counseling them to be open with me and honest. And each of those three were, in fact, pretty much everybody I talked to was open and I hope honest. And, you know, some people said no, but of course they're always going to be people who say no. And again, I don't have speed of power. So I've learned to live with that. And I don't mind it, you know, some of my favorite stories and acts that I've been able to tell have been when people don't speak to me. And I frankly get a kick out of that a lot of the times. And I get also, you know, some people who are quite adversarial and have PR people who are quite adversarial, which I do not recommend at all, if anybody wants my advice on this. But nevertheless, there are people who do take that tack, which just frankly spurs me on. It was really nice and kind of Leon and Mark and Josh to answer all my questions pretty much the whole time. You know, we're very generous, obviously with their time, these people are, you know, they haven't reviewed anything, they haven't read it as far as I know, and they will, obviously. So, you know, I'm thankful. And that I define is success, but I couldn't tell you why they do it. I think it's smart that they do it, but I can't tell you why. Yeah. And, you know, we're grateful that they do, because I think that this, you know, your books, they do provide these insights into, you know, things that otherwise would remain a mystery in people that otherwise would remain a mystery and they're very non-judgmental. So in money to burn, it includes this extensive history of Mike Milken and Andrexel Burnham. And, you know, like Eli, Ellie Black, Milken also set out with other career paths in mind, like a scientist or an astronaut, but he went into finance, right, believing that social revolution or whatever kind of required access to capital. Ellie was actually a rabbi, Ellie on, Leon Black comes from a long line of rabbis. I mean, like the, the histories here were, were amazing. Mark Rowan also, I'd say, almost went into an entirely different career in Cornell, but last minute switched to Penn. So I, you know, I kind of want to get your take on, on, you know, could you describe how it happens and how some of the, the people in your, in your books, they shift so dramatically from high-minded, idealistic ambitions to, to business and finance. Yeah. Well, I did the same thing. So I can totally relate to the fact, you know, I was intent on being a, you in reverse. Well, I was intent on being a high-minded journalist to change the world. That's why I went into journalism. It's to be like Woodward and Bernstein and, you know, that went up the tubes, you know, after a few years as a reality kicked in and, and then I was able to go back to it. So I totally, and I think most people nowadays do, you know, start off on one path and something happens and they go in a different direction or switch jobs a lot. I mean, the, the, the, the greatest, you know, piece of alchemy that there is as I alluded to before is the MBA. I mean, you know, how do you, I mean, going from covering public education in Wake County North Carolina to, you know, being on a path to doing big M&A deals is, it only happened with an MBA, at least at, at that time. So I'm really, Max, I'm really into the, the, the personal stories of all these people. And, you know, the fact that Leon comes from 10 generations of Orthodox rabbis, his father was an Orthodox rabbi on Long Island and then somehow went from doing that, talk about career change, went from doing that to getting his MBA at Columbia and going to work at Lehman and, and one of my favorite stories is how, you know, Leon, after his father died, we'll leave it at that because I don't want to spoil anything, no spoiler alerts. Um, I may get into it, we want to get into it, absolutely, but, um, but Leon, you know, wanting to go to Lehman and he would shut down at Lehman and wanting to go to Solomon and shut down at Solomon and, you know, he'd like pushed and pushed to find out why. And they told him that didn't think he had what it took to, to, to be a banker. When I wrote my book about called Four Friends, about four friends of mine from high school and over, I had a English teacher, I went back and got all of my reports from my teachers and my dorm masters and there was one when I was a ninth grader from my English teacher at that time who said, essentially, you are such a horrible writer that, please, don't ever think of yourself as a writer, don't ever try to become a writer because that will be a disaster for you. And so, you know, when Leon told me how he had tried to, you know, go to Lehman and Solomon and was shut down and ended up at Drexel, I was, I could totally relate to that. Yeah, it's, you know, I guess, what Alfred Adler, a theory of whatever is your weakest part is the one you have the greatest strength in developing. I mean, I do, I, you know, I think we should, we should touch on like some of the darker themes that run, run through your stories. You don't really back away from them at all, right? Like you said, Four Friends is a, it's called Four Friends, Promising Lives Cut Short. It does center on the tragic deaths of, of four promising young men and like classmates of, of yours, including JFK Jr. And in money to burn, right, this, this also comes up in this very, very personal history of Leon Black's dad leading, leading up to his, you know, very publicized suicide in 1975 as his company United Brands became embroiled in a scandal. And there's, there's, there's passing references to other suicides. You know, something that Leon shared with Mark Rowan and these men's lives are shaped by these, these tragedies. How do you view the impact of these tragedies on, on Leon, on Mark and the, uh, the subjects of your book? Totally. I mean, driving forces, I mean, so especially, I mean, I think in both Leon and Mark's cases, I mean, obviously they're, both of them, their fathers committed suicide as Leon told me that was one of the things that bonded him with Mark. Obviously, they had very different reasons, I believe, for committing suicide. But in both cases, I think it drove them forward and especially in Leon's case because, you know, his father was a prominent CEO. They lived a very wealthy life, existence on Park Avenue and, and, and in Connecticut. And, you know, his wealth was tied up in the stock of his company. And then when he committed suicide, that stock tank, their wealth dissipated. His mother was an artist. His sister was like a teacher, suddenly he became, you know, he was in his second year at Harvard Business School when this happened where he didn't even want to go. He only went reluctantly because his father urged him to buy what I, that was another thing that I could relate to with Leon, his, his not wanting to go to the take, get business school, but your father urging you to do it. And he did it. And, you know, he thought he was going to go into the movies or, you know, go into journalism or whatever he thought he was going to do. He had written his thesis at Dartmouth, you know, about philosophers and writers and artists in the early, early, early 20th century and the maskers and the non-maskers. Incredibly intellectual thesis, I don't know how he did it, frankly. You know, I think it just shows you how his mind works, which is quite fascinating. And he was forced because of his father's unexpected death to become, feel like he had to become the breadwinner for his mother and his sister and that makes total sense to me. And I guess he decided that the way to do that quickly was to, you know, go to Wall Street and he was, you know, a big success there. So he didn't want to do that, but I think he felt the need to do it. Mark, I think, seemed much more on that line, that path, you know, before his father, you know, committed suicide. And he took the Wharton like a, you know, a duck to water. I mean, the guy was just a natural. I mean, he's probably one of the most gifted orators about Wall Street and Wall Street products I've ever come across. I don't know how you feel about that. But I had as reporting on Caesars that it was very consistent. Right. There's nobody like Mark Rowan for just extemporaneous, this like explanations, manipulation as marized. Like, you know, and and encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much anything. It's incredible. Yeah, without notes. So it's a good, you know, I like your book contains this, you know, the most comprehensive history of the origins of Apollo inside Drexel that, you know, that I've, I've ever seen including, you know, like having dug into the origins of Apollo and a lot of the ins and outs and the early successes with executive life and, and then the ascendance of, of Josh Harris and Mark Rowan. And I, you know, and I think it's really, it's really great. How much you go into just how clearly it was Leon's company, right, like Mark and Josh, they got co-founder titles later, but it was, you know, Leon founded it with a couple of other co-founders, if anything, that we're not Mark and Josh that could have been named co-founders. Could you just describe a little bit about Leon's struggle to think like with success in planning, right, and in thinking about the long-term success of Apollo? I think all these private equity firms struggle with the succession question and some do it a lot better than others and some are still struggling with it right in front of our eyes today. You know, I think one of the reasons one of my jobs as a banker was to cover private equity firms when they first started emerging and of course they didn't want to have anything to do with an M&A guy because they were all M&A guys themselves. So it was really a really very difficult assignment and that's when I got to know Mark when Apollo first started because I was at Lazard, you know, quote, unquote, covering Apollo, whatever that meant at that time, which meant like traipsing over to his office and showing him these quote unquote actionable ideas and then him like giving me the back of his hand, 95% of the time, but so 5% of the time you convinced him, huh? And then that doesn't mean he used me after he did the deal. Like they bought into the movie theater industry and after I've been showing a movie theater ideas forever and you know, didn't even hire me. But so okay, fine, whatever, all fair and love and war on Wall Street. So I mean, I think I was also close to forceman little did do business with forceman little, but they could not get Teddy forceman, could not get succession, right? And that firm dissolved. I think KKR is seems to have a path forward, but you know, Henry and George are still hanging around the hoop. Steve Schwartzman seems to have, you know, with John Gray has an incredible next generation leader, but he's still hanging around the hoop because of the events I described in the book that obviously you're very familiar with. I mean, Leon had to leave Apollo and that left after some succession struggle, which I documented the book, you know, leaving Mark in a position to be the leader. I mean, and you know, there's no Leon hanging around the hoop or Josh. So that has worked out extremely well, you know, even David, David Rubenstein seems to be hanging around the hoop at Carlisle. You know, so there's a, it's hard for these guys to let go. They're kind of names around the door, so to speak and who would give it up? Who in the world would ever give up these jobs if they didn't have to? I mean, and Leon, of course, remains the largest shareholder of Apollo with something like 90 million shares, but one of the most incredible gifts that one Wall Street or, you know, bestowed on others was the gift that you alluded to of Leon giving Mark and Josh 58 million Apollo shares, which he did not have to do, and he did that so that when they, you know, as they were going public, they could show to investors that he had a succession path in mind, even though he was not planning to retire, of course, or leave, but that he had sort of a next he had tapped the next generation to be in position to succeed him. And he gave them these shares outright, right? They're like, yeah, like, and he couldn't do it. And once he gave it to them, you know, he couldn't fire them. And so he named, and they said, well, you know, if you want to say your co-founders, okay, if that's good on your, on your business card to say your co-founder, that's fine. I mean, obviously, I was the founder, guys, but if you want to say your co-founders, that's fine. And then suddenly that became, oh, yeah, there were three co-founders that now is just, you know, Mark and Josh were the founders of Apollo, but a lot of revision history. A lot of revision history. I mean, I do not think, I mean, like before, like before reading this book, I, you know, I didn't appreciate just how generous it was and, and like in some ways, unnecessary for, for Leon to have, have given them as much as he did. He made them each, you know, 10 billionaires. I mean, he made it possible for Josh to buy the Sixers and the commanders and whatever else sports he's bought and Mark to pursue all of his, you know, Michigas out there on the eastern end of Long Island, that, you know, in his homes and all every, you know, they all have unbelievable real estate, unbelievable ways to get from one place to another. And Leon just gifted that to them, it's quite remarkable and really money to burn. So I, you know, we've tipped out around it a little bit and this is, you know, this is, I think, one of the interesting things and the big reveals in the book. So I'll ask you in this way, the, you know, the reason that Leon ultimately fully resigned, even though succession planning was underway was, you know, versus Epstein ties and then, you know, didn't help that there was another bit of an extra marital, fair scandal. But it's, it's really ties to, you know, the disgrace, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, who's convicted, felon running petafiled rings and ultimately who committed suicide in prison. And this long relationship that Leon Black had with him, you know, paying him over $150 million. So over the, over several years for presumed tax advice that he could have gotten, likely could have gotten from, you know, any, any one of his major law firms that he, he used especially Paul Wise. And so I, I'd start with, because I know that you, you know, you wrote about this when it first came out and when there was this, there was an investigation by, you know, like a reputable law from Decker into his ties, Leon Black's ties to Epstein on behalf of Apollo to find out if he had any knowledge of the criminal doings. And he was, Leon Black was largely exonerated. At the time, why, why don't you describe what's your initial impression of the Epstein revelations with respect to Leon Black? And then how did that evolve throughout the course of writing this book? Right. Well, good, good for you for remembering that. And I, I think about that all, all the time when the Decker report first came out, you know, I read it and I, I mean, my jar was on the ground about the 158 million and the explanation and I wrote a piece in Vanity Fair where I was at the time, a special correspondent and just said, yeah, good, essentially good, dry Leon. There's no way you can expect us to believe that this is why you paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million. It's just a not credible and, you know, I interviewed a few people who said it was even worse than not credible because for just the reason that you said, Max, that he could have gotten this advice even charredably. He, being very charitable, he could have gotten it for $5 million from some, you know, Paul Weiss or Solomon and Cromwell or Simpson Thatcher or whomever on Wall Street. And here he is paying Jeffrey Epstein who's not even, he's an auto-died act. He's not a lawyer, you know, maybe he's some sort of weirdo trader, I mean, and, you know, everything else he was up to $158 million. You've got to be kidding me, you know, and I think that was the reaction of most people. And it's still the reaction, I think of most people and it's still very hard to believe. And a lot of people still have a very hard time believing that Leon, you know, legitimately paid him that money for that reason. And I, Leon and I talked about that. And he, I didn't shy away from sharing with him my initial reaction and letting him explain to me his logic for why even though he is like a supposed to be a Wall Street master of the universe, somehow he, you know, agreed to pay this guy all this money to fix his tax and estate problems. And you know, first of all, he let me explore it with him thoroughly. He let me speak to his lawyers, which I did. I saw documents that were redrafted as a result of Jeffrey Epstein's input. I certainly read any number of the insane Jeffrey Epstein emails that he wrote to Leon, it's sort of referencing what he had done for Leon. And again, I don't know whether this is just like some elaborate rules they all made up all these people sort of together. I mean, it could be, I suppose, some sort of weirdo conspiracy they concocted. But it doesn't really feel that way at this point. I think if you read the book, you'll, you know, you'd see the what in effect Jeffrey Epstein did for Leon, which wasn't really give him, you know, tax and estate advice because he certainly wasn't capable of that. But he, he didn't realize there was a way to unwind what had been done that was going to cost Leon $2 billion. He, he came up with sort of what I call the, I think I called it the magical consideration, you know, that allowed Leon to make the legal case that he should rewrite the documents without a penalty. And no one else came up with that. And then that was ratified by his various attorneys by my favorite part, you know, forgetting all that, that's so technical and you can get really kind of, it's, I had said, you know, it's more clearly articulated in this book, I, you know, we'll, we'll leave it to the listeners to, you know, to, to read it, to get the full, really, the, like the full story as close as I think that we can get to, to the truth at this moment. But it, it, you know, there is a lot of esoteric stuff that went on and, and yeah, a lot of Epstein's emails were crazy to talk to Leon black the way that he did. And Leon, yeah, you know, you got to hand it to Leon, unlike say. a Larry Summers, he did not respond to Epstein, not in email anyway. Yeah. And therefore there's no, I like the quote about one of his Drexel partners saying that Leon knows how to keep his fingerprints off things and he did repeatedly as you alluded to with the executive life deal, which got his partners credit Lee and A at the top of that company indicted. And Leon avoided that problem and Drexel with the whole firm blew up and Mike Milkin went to jail. Mike Milkin is one who by the way won't has never been willing to talk to me. Never, never once he I wrote a, I wrote a cover story about him an institutional investor on his 70th birthday giving him lots of credit for what he deserves credit for, but also pointing out that he went to prison after pleading guilty to crimes. And till I basically that's it. You know, I will never, he didn't talk to me for that piece, but his people told me he will never speak to me as a result of writing that factually and balanced assessment of his career. So there you go, he's been skinned. Maybe I'll come around, whatever. Yeah. But so my one of one of my favorite things that Leon, when I, when I, when we were talking about this and how could the great Leon Black screwed up his tax in the States and potentially be liable for $2 billion and be, you know, taking advice from Jeffrey Epstein about that and et cetera, you know, it's just sort of like a series of events that boggles the mind. And then he told me about how, and I love this. And I, I mean, it's the perfect answer that he came up with because it, you know, I don't know what that really means anything, but I just loved it. He told me, well, yes, I'm also the same guy who bought these two small Raphael drawings for $50 million each. And of course, he's the same guy who spent $120 million on the screen and $140 million on a Picasso sculpture. And he's got a art collection that's worth several billion dollars at this point, probably the most incredible art collection in private hands in the United States. And, you know, I'm that same guy. So how do you explain that? If I'm supposed to be such a savvy, a stewed buyer and careful negotiator and fear lists and everybody's afraid of me, I believe he was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week and the one title headline that said ruthless. So if he's supposed to be ruthless, how could he have had a vulnerability here? And, you know, I guess that was his way of trying to explain to me that he was not as nipadent and, you know, all knowing as people think that he is and his reputation was and that, you know, again, I don't know whether this is just a story. You know, it's George Costanza said to Jerry, it's not a lie. Jerry, if you believe it. And I don't know whether there's an element of that in all of this. He certainly believes everything he told me and he gave it to me on the record. And honestly, Max, I've looked, I've looked everywhere. I don't really see a whole lot refuting that story. I know that's not what people want to hear. I know what they want to believe about Leon. And I'm not sure. And I'm not saying I blame them for believing what they want to believe about Leon. But I've looked through those files, those Epstein files, you know, meticulously. And I just haven't found anything. There's illusions that are weird. You know, you wrote, you said they're crazy emails and they are. But Leon never responded to any of them. And everybody I interviewed, you know, basically ratified a lot of what Leon told me. Yeah. And there's plenty of scandal to go around in spite of there not being certain smoking guns. And which you said about George Costanza, it's for fun for some reason immediately brings Trump to mind. Of course. And there's a lot of that going around. You know, who's a friend of, you know, who's a friend of, who's a friend of Leon and they, they, you know, went together to, you know, in Russia to a disco tech. Right. I mean, that was a joke. You know, almost had to include that. It was, and it was, but, you know, like that, that, you know, there's these, there's these circles and there's these relationships, including with the Leon Blacks mistress, right, that became revealed through a bunch of court documents. First, that are revealed by her, yeah, in tweets, yeah, in exactly. And then, and then our, you know, our, our friend and pure Josh Cosmon in the, in the New York Post, picking up on that while, while the New York Times was passing on the story. And, you know, and what do you think by the way of those revelations, those texts between Matt Goldstein and yourself? Oh, man. Yeah. The, the, the book is worth it just for that. How did you get those? You have to reveal all your secrets there. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, like it really, you know, in addition to an amazing history of, of Apollo and, and, and, and, and Leon Black, there's a great case study of the, right, the, the seduction of a source by a journalist and vice versa, and pursuing these, you know, these stories, you know, it's very loaded sometimes. Journalists are fallible. Let's just put it that way. Shocking. Yes. It is shocking. You know, I wanted to go into where things have, settled, currently, including the sphere and influence of Apollo still to this day under Mark Rowan. And, you know, and then potentially we could finish with just how I, you know, it might, it might even turn out to be good for, for Leon Black, because of his stake keeps on becoming more valuable as, as Mark Rowan does, but he does with a theme and, and Apollo and growing it into what it is. So can you, yeah, can you describe like, first of all, how Mark instead of Josh became the CEO of Apollo and then his merger of, of this insurance company, a theme with Apollo to create it into what it is today? Well, as we, we talked before, I mean, Mark is one of the smoothest operators on Wall Street. And he's also one of the smartest people on Wall Street, too. So that's a very powerful combination, even though he looks like he's 12 years old. And he was always Leon's, as I describe in the book, I mean Leon wanted him to be his successor. And that was the whole plan. And Mark either brilliantly or whatever was sort of like a reluctant bride here. And, you know, acted, you know, went on sabbatical as you know. And the Caesars deal somehow did not hurt him. They'd lost billions of dollars. You know, he acted like he didn't want it. Only one point three was, I think, their check at the end of the day. Not so bad. Not so bad. Not so bad. They're the worst loss ever. Worst lost ever. And, you know, now, of course, they're, they're bigger losses like with Thomas Bravo and Medallion or whatever it is. I mean, they're big ones. But at the time, I was a huge loss end. And the way you describe in your book, which I'm, of course, I just loved. And I could only, you did such a great job with that that I had to just leave it there and let and refer to it and have people read it because there's nothing I could add. But the way that that Mark used every financial piece of engineering, he could possibly think of to try to get them out of that. I just found, you know, so riveting. But he decided he essentially didn't want to try to compete with Josh and Leon for like running the firm. He just like decided either intelligently because, you know, he decided he didn't want to do it or he would be better for his own future prospects of being coming to CEO if he just laid low and let them do it out. So he was had no interest in that and took this sabbatical quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, but in, in, you know, and before that, he had been approached by Jim Belardi, who had been at Sun America is one of the top executives there with this idea of creating a, this was after 2008 financial crisis or sort of in the middle of it, slash after creating a new, an insurance company that would provide annuities and they would take the money that they got from people buying annuities and then, you know, invested hopefully intelligently and making more money through their investing, that money, then they had to pay out on the annuities. So it was like, you know, trying to architect one of the classic architect away out of one of the classic foibles and conundrums of fractional banking, which is borrowing short and lending long. And basically, Mark and Jim came up with this idea of creating a source of capital that was both where the, where the duration of the liabilities and the assets were basically the same. And that is like, you know, a revolution, that was like a revolutionary idea, essentially because every bank from time immemorial has battled the problem of borrowing short and lending long because especially if you're a depository institution, you know, people can go to the ATM machines and get their money out in an instant and that's of course what happened with Silicon Valley Bank and why it went down the tubes. And so Mark and Jim sort of decided they had created this better mouse trap. I don't really think it started that way. I think it just started as, hey, this is an interesting idea with this smart guy who worked at Sun America. If we could create something like what Jim had done at Sun America as an investment in Apollo, but not a private equity investment, just sort of like a side investment and started out with like $16 million, which is of course nothing for these guys. And it turned into this annuity behemoth, which they took public. And you know, I'm sure did fine when they took it public and they were managing all the assets over at Apollo and taking a fee on all of that. And of course, but Mark always wanted to merge it back in and use it as the engine for this private credit bananza that Mark conceived of, which of course we are still living through, including yesterday where now Apollo is like refinancing all the debt of the Yankees and taking an equity position in the Yankees. You know, they, you know, their distressed arm will be able to take advantage of the private credit blobs. You know, they're part of the $500 billion lending facility that, you know, for an individual, I mean, it's a juggernaut. I mean, if you look at Apollo and I know you do, you know, there are one trillion of assets is now $850 billion of private credit and $150 of private equity. And, you know, it used to be just private equity. So Mark architected and conceived of, and he couldn't have done this max if he had not been at a front row seat at the executive life deal. And then when he, when he worked with Jessica Bibliwitz to create the, what was it, national financial partners or whatever, the insurance brokerage business that was a success. I mean, Mark has, and of course, he couldn't have done it if he hadn't been a Drexel learning about credit and high yield securities. I mean, he's just had the most perfect kind of education that would allow him to create this thing called a theme and make it incredibly successful and a juggernaut. I mean, he's led the whole private credit juggernaut that exists in alternative asset management and in Wall Street now. Everybody has copied what Mark has initiated and tried to emulate it, which is of course typical. I mean, everybody copied Mike Milkin to eventually and then overtook him and we'll see what happens with Mark whether he's created another, you know, nuclear weapon here. You know, we've seen some cracks people getting nervous about private credit as you are well aware. And you know, they keep saying, oh no, it's great. It's not a problem. It's wonderful, but you know, essentially, if you really, you know, strip away all the spinning and the puffery and the, you know, the smooth talking, which Mark is so damn good at, you just can't help but admire it. You know, he's really just created an unregulated bank where, you know, they owe their annuadence 5% or whatever it is on their money every year and they're in the business of taking that 5% money and turning it into 11, 12, 13% money with all sorts of ways. And if, you know, again, the durations are matched and they're definitely penalties for trying to get your money out early. But at the end of the day, if the annuadence decide collectively and numbers too big to ignore that they are willing to pay those penalties and get their money out, then, you know, the public would have a run on the bank, so to speak. Now, I know Mark will, you know, is not going to like that observation or think that it's even remotely possible. But, you know, there are a lot of things we didn't think were remotely possible leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. There are a lot of things we didn't remotely think were possible when we saw it happen again with Silicon Valley Bank and Republic and signature banks. So I'm sure Mr. Ashen Brenner, whatever his name is, didn't think his hedge fund would be, you know, subsumed by Ken Griffin either. So it happens just when you least expect it. It's a, it is a great warning. And that's, you know, I think a good place to stop right there. Leave us wanting more. We, at 9th in, are covering the potential for the systemic risk of the private credit boom as, you know, as led by Apollo, Blue Al and some others, but really money to burn the unvarnished truth about Leon Black Apollo and the rise of the new Wall Street is just necessary reading to understand how this current environment came about. And, and the Wall Street that that is today operates. Bill, thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, your fabulous interviewer. Thank you. I've loved this. This I was most so looking forward to. Thank you. I, I really appreciate it. And I was looking forward to it too, because I know of almost anybody else who I'm going to talk to or have the privilege of talking to you, understand this company, this group is well as I do. And, and I learned a lot. So, yeah, very, very, very helpful book. Thank you. [Music] [Music]