Episode summary
Money to Burn | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 26 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: William D. Cohan
Summary
William D. Cohan discusses his book on Leon Black and Apollo Global Management as a broad history of a firm, a person, and a financial era. He argues that Apollo cannot be understood without Drexel, Mike Milken, and the rise of high-yield finance, and he traces how those ideas fed into private equity, private credit, and the modern alternative-asset business. He also frames the book as a narrative about succession, power, and how Apollo’s original group of peers and associates split into rival camps over time.
Key takeaways
- William D. Cohan says Apollo’s roots run back to Drexel, Mike Milken, and the credit innovation that helped create the high-yield market.
- The host and Cohan discuss how Apollo’s early deals in distressed credit, executive life bonds, and insurance helped shape its investing model.
- Cohan argues that the Leon Black-Jeffrey Epstein relationship remains too nuanced for simple shorthand, even as it drew intense public scrutiny.
- Cohan warns that private credit could contain the seeds of the next financial crisis if leverage and retail access expand too far.
- He says Leon Black is likely financially secure, but social redemption may be harder to regain.
Notable quotes
“success has many fathers right and so uh I mean look I think to be to be fair it was Leon's firm”
“it's a very hard thing to shortorthhand because there's more nuance to it than people are ready to deal with”
“He's got the best art collection in private hands in the world”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.
Well, our next guest is the author of many books, several New York Times bestsellers, books about Goldman Sachs, The Fall of Bear Sterns. He's written about the Duke Lacrosse scandal. He's written about his friends.
He's written about General Electric. Eight books in 22 years. He was a Wall Street M&A investment banker for 17 years, then financial journalist, writing for a who's who of business journalism and more, including Business Week.
He was also a contributor to Bloomberg TV.
Yep. And at one time even anchored with me, as I always like to remind everybody, um his latest book, it is the eighth one, just out this week, Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth about Leon Black, Apollo and the Rise of a New Wall Street. So lovely to have us uh have back with us, Bill Cohen. How are you?
I'm great. Thank you for having me. Well, it's great to have you here. We're going to get into the book, but I got to ask you because we have been doing the power players and talking a lot about sports today. Um, and we think about Apollo, who has been certainly doubling down when it comes to sports. Um, 2.6 billion financing for the New York
Yankees, — Hated, I'm sorry, I'm a Red Sox fan. Go ahead. Keep going. — But then you have things like Mark Walters of Guggenheim. like that whole — And Josh Harris of course who owns the Commanders and the Sixers and the New Jersey Devils.
I I think about Wall Street. I think about sports game strategy like you know risk and so on and so forth.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- alternative asset management
- private credit
- wall street controversies
- apollo history
- jeffrey epstein controversy
Companies and tickers mentioned
- APO
- Apollo Global Management
Watch the episode
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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