Key Takeaways
- • Apollo Global Management has traded "billions of capital" in the secondary private markets, leveraging its Sponsor and Secondary Solutions (S3) business unit to access and monetize private assets at scale.
- • The firm has executed over $3 billion in private loan trades since September 2025, including $260 million in secondary private credit transactions in a single week, signaling aggressive positioning in the $1.6 trillion private credit market.
- • Apollo is developing a marketplace infrastructure for private credit trading, partnering with Wall Street banks to syndicate and establish a structured trading platform—a first-of-its-kind mechanism for the historically illiquid private credit space.
- • Natalia Tsitoura, Head of Sponsor Origination and European Private Credit at Apollo, has led origination, structuring, and underwriting efforts, positioning the firm as a key player in secondary private markets origination and distribution.
- • Apollo's private assets are priced competitively within the secondary market while continuing to deliver returns, reflecting the firm's ability to source attractive secondary positions amid broader market liquidity demands.
Summary
Apollo Global Management has emerged as an aggressive trader in the secondary private markets, deploying what leadership describes as "billions of capital" through structured secondary transactions. According to Bloomberg reporting on comments from Natalia Tsitoura, Head of Sponsor Origination at Apollo, the firm has already accumulated substantial trading volume in private loans and credit instruments, with $3 billion in aggregate trades executed since September 2025 alone—including $260 million completed in a single recent week.
The core vehicle driving this activity is Apollo's Sponsor and Secondary Solutions (S3) business, a holistic platform designed to provide scale, speed, and flexibility in private markets secondaries. This unit facilitates both the acquisition of secondary positions from existing investors and the syndication of those assets to qualified institutional buyers. The breadth of Apollo's secondary strategy spans traditional private equity fund interests, sponsor-backed credit facilities, and increasingly, direct lending and private credit instruments.
Notably, Apollo is constructing what amounts to the first organized marketplace for private credit trading, a sector that has historically operated through bilateral negotiations and limited liquidity. By partnering with major Wall Street banks to syndicate and trade private credit instruments, Apollo is creating infrastructure that could standardize pricing, improve liquidity discovery, and accelerate secondary market turnover in a $1.6 trillion asset class. This represents a significant structural shift for private credit, which has traditionally lacked the trading venues available in public bond or loan markets.
The secondary private markets themselves have grown to represent a material capital allocation opportunity, with estimates citing $225 billion in annual secondary market activity. Apollo's aggressive positioning reflects both the firm's scale—it manages substantial dry powder and committed capital—and institutional demand for liquid exposure to mature private assets with reduced vintage risk and more predictable cash flow profiles. The fact that Apollo's assets are characterized as "priced to perfection" while still delivering competitive returns suggests the firm has successfully navigated the valuation tension inherent in secondary acquisitions, where prices have risen as competition for quality assets has intensified.
The core vehicle driving this activity is Apollo's Sponsor and Secondary Solutions (S3) business, a holistic platform designed to provide scale, speed, and flexibility in private markets secondaries. This unit facilitates both the acquisition of secondary positions from existing investors and the syndication of those assets to qualified institutional buyers. The breadth of Apollo's secondary strategy spans traditional private equity fund interests, sponsor-backed credit facilities, and increasingly, direct lending and private credit instruments.
Notably, Apollo is constructing what amounts to the first organized marketplace for private credit trading, a sector that has historically operated through bilateral negotiations and limited liquidity. By partnering with major Wall Street banks to syndicate and trade private credit instruments, Apollo is creating infrastructure that could standardize pricing, improve liquidity discovery, and accelerate secondary market turnover in a $1.6 trillion asset class. This represents a significant structural shift for private credit, which has traditionally lacked the trading venues available in public bond or loan markets.
The secondary private markets themselves have grown to represent a material capital allocation opportunity, with estimates citing $225 billion in annual secondary market activity. Apollo's aggressive positioning reflects both the firm's scale—it manages substantial dry powder and committed capital—and institutional demand for liquid exposure to mature private assets with reduced vintage risk and more predictable cash flow profiles. The fact that Apollo's assets are characterized as "priced to perfection" while still delivering competitive returns suggests the firm has successfully navigated the valuation tension inherent in secondary acquisitions, where prices have risen as competition for quality assets has intensified.
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