Mega Edition: Marc Rowan And Leon Black Outmaneuver Josh Harris To Keep Control At Apollo (7/1/26)

**Bobby Capucci** (0:01)
This morning, we're going to dive right back in to the Leon Black topic. From the very beginning of this whole entire ordeal with Leon Black, I told you that inside of the boardroom, there was a major power struggle underway between Josh Smith and Leon Black. Well, today, in Cranes, New York, they're going in to a bit of detail about what is going on behind the scenes.
Now, you know me, I'm not one of these people that runs around talking about, oh, I have sources everywhere because I don't. But when it comes to the financial world and it comes to Wall Street, I happen to have a few former colleagues who I still keep in contact with, who have their ear to the ground and who told me that this was coming, and I relayed that to you folks as well. There was no way that someone like Josh Smith was going to be sidelined by these guys, and there wasn't going to be some sort of boardroom brouhaha kicked into gear, because Smith isn't some sort of, you know, meek go quietly into the night kind of cat, right? We're talking about sharks in the water. And all of these guys are, you know, alpha predators.
I mean, when we talk about gray characters and no good guys, we're certainly talking about the financial world. But my former colleagues, friends of mine, acquaintances, said that there was serious issues going on at Apollo in that boardroom, and that there was a huge, huge power struggle going on behind the scenes, even if the investors and the employees said otherwise. Because they don't want that kind of struggle blasted all over the world, right? They don't want that publicized so their investors get shook. We're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars in investments, folks. The last thing you want to do is look like you're inconsistent when it comes to management. So they tried to keep this under wraps. They tried to keep everything on the hush hush, right? No way. When you have a company as big as Apollo and they have such a market share, well, things get out, right? You can't keep the ship airtight. So there was rumors of this for several months now and even longer that Josh Smith was angling to get rid of Leon Black. And it looks like during the power struggle, even though Black has had to step back and resign his positions and stuff, it looks like Leon Black came out on top here, folks. Because Smith had to end up taking a back seat, right?
So once again, Leon Black even from behind the scenes still seems to be pulling the strings.
And this infighting, this battle within the boardroom, I honestly don't think it's going to end anytime soon. Josh Smith is not the pack it up and go home kind of guy, folks. So from what I'm hearing and from what we know as far as what's been reported publicly, it certainly looks like this whole entire Apollo global situation and the nuclear fallout that's hanging over Apollo and Leon Black isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So today we have an article from Cranes, New York, headline, a brawl between billionaire founders at Apollo sidelines one of its own. So, this article was originally published in Bloomberg. So, it's being re-run here on Cranes. So, originally published to Bloomberg being re-run here on Cranes. All right, so this article was authored by Sabrina Wilmer, Heather Pearlberg, and Sridhar Natarajan.
And it originally appeared in Bloomberg. Three months after Josh Harris made his failed pitch to take Leon Black's crown atop a $455 billion investing juggernaut, Black's chosen heir is in charge, and Harris is on the outs. And we, you know, we've been talking about this, right? How with a power struggle like this, and the egos that we're dealing with, there was no way that Harris was just going to sit down and accept being shoved out. The youngest of the three, a guy that is very vibrant, very active, owns sports teams, shit like that, right? Super alpha male. There was no way he was going to just be pushed to the side, and there wasn't going to be any sort of clap back from him. And we talked about this months ago when all of this was first breaking.
The behind-the-scenes drama between Apollo Global Management, Inc.'s billionaire co-founders keeps brewing, with ramifications for investors as the company reconfigures its governance this year. Yeah, look, this is certainly factual, according to my sources and the people I've talked to, and the people I know that are on the ground. In the financial district, 100%, there is a huge battle brewing. A huge battle brewing.