William Cohan, bestselling author of House of Cards and Power Failure, reveals in Money to Burn, the turbulent but true tale of Apollo, a powerful and controversial financial empire.

Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s most formidable investment firms, has thrived in private equity and private credit, delivering staggering returns through aggressive takeovers and bold, contrarian bets. Leon black was in his second year at Harvard Business School when his famous father, a Jewish Pole originally named Eliasz Blachowicz,  who arrived in New York and went on to build United Brands, a banana -to-meatpacking conglomerate, but  he threw himself out of his office window, as a bribery scandal unfolded. Leon Black overcame personal tragedy, worked with junk bond maestro Michael Milken, founded private capital giant Apollo Global Management, chaired New York’s MoMA Gallery, and then suffered a humiliating fall from grace through his association with Jeffrey Epstein.  Black, himself is concise in diagnosing the reason for his resilience, first at Drexel, then through the Crédit Lyonnais affair. Apollo was a specialist in troubled debt and inspired by Drexel’s operations, through the financial backing from France’s state-owned Crédit Lyonnais, in the purchase of the defunct Executive Life Insurance Company, and the fortune made from buying the knockdown debt of companies that Drexel had financed so aggressively. The deal backfired for Crédit Lyonnais, whose government backing should have barred it from owning such a US business. Huge fines ensued, the bank’s death knell was sounded. Black was persuaded to go to Harvard Business School by his father. “My father convinces me that whatever I want to do is fine- If I want to teach, If I want to go to into film- on the condition first that I get some exposure to the financial world. He had given me some exposure. We used to go visit factories together. I had very little interest in business” Leon Black said.

 Cohen, a former investment banker turned journalist, uses Black’s life to tell the story of Wall Street’s evolution over the past half-century from bank dominated cosiness to private capital-dominated aggression, much of it, corporate greed. Blending gripping narrative with meticulous reporting, Money to Burn offers a spectacular investigation into this controversial and powerful financial empire, where the billionaires at the top have brought the same appetite for risk at work to their chaotic personal lives.

Rising from the ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert after the junk bond crisis in the 1980s, Apollo under the leadership of Leon Black, has come to epitomize the new Wall Street for more than three decades. Black and his co-founders Marc Rowan and Josh Harris -may at times make for a breathless account that marvels at the firm’s prowess. But in 2021, Black resigned. His dramatic downfall due in part to his close person and business relationship with the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile who died in prison in 2019, is a riveting saga of extreme wealth, jealous rivalries and public scandal. Black has never been charged with any crimes in connection with Epstein or otherwise and has consistently denied any wrongdoing with regard to his dealings with Epstein. The world that Black inhabits comes across as depressingly male-dominated and sexist. His former Russian lover Guzel Ganieva- who alleged she was abused by Black ( which he categorically denied) and who appears to get very rich by agreeing to stay quiet about their affair before going public about their relationship. Black who has a Trumpian obsession with winning but yearning to be compared with Warren Buffett, is a fine example of long-sighted capitalism.

Apollo created an ingenious new model for global finance- or planted the seeds of our next great financial crisis.

Year 2008 marked the global financial crisis, the Wall Street figures that commanded popular interest were the big players at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan. But then came the relative decline of the stock and bond markets and the explosive rise of private equity and private credit. 

Money to Burn: Leon Black, Apollo and the Remaking of Wall Street by William D Cohan, Allen Lane, £40/portfolio $40, 688 pages.