(Bloomberg) -- Leon Black barely touched his stake in Apollo Global Management Inc. during the decades he turned the firm into a buyout giant and became one of Wall Street’s richest billionaires.
That’s changed following his departure from the New York-based firm.
The Apollo co-founder has sold or gifted 9.1 million shares of his multibillion-dollar stake since January, the most in a calendar year since the private equity firm went public more than a decade ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from regulatory filings.
Black, 72, parted with the latest chunk last month, donating a $118.4 million stake to a philanthropic vehicle. That raised the total value of shares he’s offloaded this year to more than $1 billion, based on Apollo’s share price at the time of each transaction.
The transaction spree signals how Black’s focus is increasingly shifting to life outside Apollo after stepping down as the firm’s chief executive officer in 2021 following three decades at the helm. Fellow co-founder Marc Rowan is now the CEO.
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Black has regularly reduced his Apollo stake since the firm’s 2011 initial public offering by gifting shares, but had never sold any until earlier this year, instead choosing to pledge part of his holding to boost his liquidity and diversify his wealth.
Meantime, the roughly 7.5 million shares he’s gifted since January are already the most in a calendar year since Apollo’s listing, with most of that total derived from a bestowal in May to his wife, Debra.
Black, who shares voting control with his wife over that stock, still oversees a roughly 14% stake in Apollo, making up roughly half of his $15 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. More than a quarter of that holding is pledged as collateral for loans, latest filings show.
“Mr. Black continues to believe in the strategy of Apollo and supports its executive team,” Sloane & Co.’s Whit Clay, a spokesperson for Black, said in an emailed statement. “These are transfers of shares to support his generous philanthropy and for estate planning purposes.”
A representative for Apollo declined to comment.
Black’s Apollo exit came after a tumultuous period that included a report from law firm Dechert that showed Black paid convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for financial advice. Black has admitted paying Epstein, who died in 2019, for tax services, but denied knowing of his sex crimes.
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Since leaving Apollo, he’s hired former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive Nikolaos Vasilatos as head of venture at his family office, Elysium Management, which also invests in real estate and private equity.
Meantime, most of Black’s stock gifts besides the sum to his wife have gone to unnamed donor-advised funds, or DAFs, a common US philanthropy vehicle for the wealthy. He and his wife have previously pledged $20 million to help New York hospital employees during the pandemic and donated almost $50 million a decade or so ago to Dartmouth College for a visual arts center.