Leon Black’s Slow Burn

Bill Cohan (0:02)

And that led to, you know, Jeffrey Epstein trying to worm his way into everything that Leon was doing, his family office, his buying and selling of art, his buying and selling of jets and boats, et cetera.

Peter Hamby (0:17)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.

It's Tuesday, September 15th. Today, I'm joined by Bill Cohan, who takes us inside his new book about private equity billionaire, Leon Black. It's called Money to Burn, the unvarnished truth about Leon Black, Apollo, and the rise of a new Wall Street. Black, of course, built the financial powerhouse Apollo alongside Josh Harris and Mark Rowan, but was undone by bad decisions, including an affair, and infamously his murky relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Bill tells me what he learned from his interviews with Black and his associates, and he responds to some criticism of his book from reporters at the New York Times. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Tuesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined by my handsomest colleague today, Bill Cohan, to talk about his new book, Money to Burn. It's about Leon Black. It's about Apollo. It's about Leon Black's controversial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It's about his controversial relationship with his own colleagues, including Josh Harris and Mark Rowan. Bill, it's good to see you. Congrats on the new book.

Bill Cohan (1:47)

Thank you, Peter.

Peter Hamby (1:48)

I want to talk about Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein. I want to talk about some cranky New York Times journalists who have criticized your new book or some of the reporting. We'll get into that. But to start, first of all, congrats on your new book. I have several of your books.

You are a brilliant writer, diligent. I look up to you in so many ways, so this is a big deal. The fact you are a prolific author and I'm so impressed by it. To start, why Leon Black? Why did you want to write a book about the founder, co-founder of Apollo? What drew you to him in the first place?

Bill Cohan (2:23)

Well, first, thank you for the kind words, Peter. I look up to you as well. I can't wait to clue in on a regular basis to your new podcast, which I find to be a brilliant idea. I am riveted by what will surely be a historic presidential race. Can't get enough of it. I just saw John Ossoff up here in Nantucket and that was interesting.

Here, by the way, is the new book in all its brilliant redness and blackness.

Peter Hamby (2:56)

For our YouTube fans, we got to show the cover.

Bill Cohan (2:58)

Exactly. Look, Peter, when you write a book of this kind of tome-like quality, it's very important to have a story and a narrative that I am myself interested in.

And I've been aware of Apollo since its founding in 1990 When I was a banker at Lazard, I used to cover the firm, used to traipse over there to see Mark Rowan and bring him what I thought were actionable M&A ideas. It was an immensely thankless task, of course, because the last thing that Mark Rowan wanted to hear from was, well, I think he wanted to hear from M&A ideas. He certainly didn't want to hire and pay a fee to an M&A banker, since he himself was a former M&A banker. So I did that for any number of years. It was utterly thankless, but I did get to know Mark. And I had never met Leon. I once or twice bumped into him on Fifth Avenue. But I just thought that the whole story, starting with Leon's father's suicide and going to Drexel and Drexel's implosion and Apollo being born out of the ashes of Drexel. And then to say nothing of all the number of good deals they've done and bad deals they've done, I don't dwell on that too much. But then the succession process, Jeffrey Epstein, as you mentioned, affairs with people who are not their wives, that kind of thing.

Peter Hamby (4:35)

You mentioned Drexel, so that was, Drexel collapsed and had a bad rep. It was Michael Milken and the junk bond era. And then these guys, the whole company basically comes out of Drexel and at the time had a stink on them. So what was their big idea when they started Apollo that would separate them from the pack or people who were trying to do what they were trying to do?