Greetings, Term Sheeters. This is finance reporter Luisa Beltran, subbing for Allie.
Three well-known private equity firms—Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo Global Management—made the Fortune 500 this year. While these three firms started off as private equity, they have since branched out into other sectors and are now considered alternative asset managers.
For many, Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo are still known for their PE roots, and I only mention this because private equity hasn’t been doing so well lately. Even though some tariffs are on pause, many mergers are on hold due to uncertainty and volatility. The IPO market, which has crawled since 2021, appears to be on an upswing but it’s still too early to say we’re in a rebound. Without M&A or IPOs, private equity has struggled to sell its deals. In the first quarter, the number of PE equity exits dropped 44% year over year to 323 transactions valued at $73.79 billion, according to PitchBook.
Without these realizations, many PE firms have struggled to return money to their investors. (Apollo is apparently the exception, returning nearly $2 billion to fund investors from April to May 22, according to the Wall Street Journal.) This has led to a hard market for fundraising, which declined 35% to $116 billion globally in Q1 compared to the same period in 2024. (Not everyone has had problems raising money. Thoma Bravo, the software focused investment firm, said Tuesday it raised more than $34.4 billion for three funds, including $24.3 billion for its flagship XVI pool.)
Luckily for Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo, private equity is just one of their strategies. Apollo is one of the biggest lenders on Wall Street, while Blackstone is a large credit and real estate investor, and KKR still does PE but has expanded into other asset classes like real estate, credit, and infrastructure. (Other PE firms like Carlyle Group, EQT, Ares and TPG weren’t big enough for the Fortune 500 but made the Fortune 1000 ranking.)
But this year has still been tough. The stock prices of many public alt managers have tumbled. Blackstone is down 30% from its 52-week high of $200.96, which it reached in November. KKR hit a 52-week high of $170.40 in January but has since fallen 29% and Apollo is off nearly 31% since reaching its year high of $189.49 in December.
When it comes to the Fortune 500, in which companies are ranked by gross revenue, I was surprised by how the three firms ranked. KKR was ranked highest of the trio, despite having the smallest amount of assets under management. Founded in 1976, KKR is currently led by co-CEOs Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall. The firm, which made it into the S&P 500 last year, had $664 billion assets under management as of March 31. KKR placed 145th on the Fortune 500, the highest of the three alt managers, with about $30 billion in 2024 gross revenue.
Apollo, the alt firm led by Marc Rowan, had $785 billion in AUM at the end of Q1. Apollo ranked 163rd on the Fortune 500 with about $26.2 billion in 2024 gross revenue.
Blackstone, which first made the Fortune 500 in 2014, is easily the biggest of the public alt managers with $1.2 trillion in assets under management. In 2024, it produced $13.2 billion in gross revenue, placing 321th on the Fortune 500.
See you tomorrow,
Luisa Beltran
X: @LuisaRBeltran
Email: luisa.beltran@fortune.com
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