Can Alternatives Replace Public Equity?

Record issuance from the AI buildout is creating a broader menu of opportunities for fixed income investors across public and private markets. In our latest conversation covering the convergence of public and private debt markets, Apollo Partners Brian Weinstein, who leads Fixed Income Replacement, and John Cortese, Co-Head of Corporate Credit and Head of Trading, discuss how this issuance is changing market structure, creating dispersion and expanding the range of risks and opportunities fixed income investors may need to evaluate.

After four decades of offshoring, a combination of pandemic-era supply shocks, rising geopolitical competition, and renewed policy focus is driving a concerted effort to rebuild America's industrial base.

Between now and 2030, roughly $5 trillion will be spent building the infrastructure for AI. To justify that investment, businesses and individuals will need to spend $2 trillion a year on AI services. Whether AI can earn back what's being spent on it is a defining question of this investment cycle, with impacts to be felt across debt and equity markets. Rob Bittencourt, who leads Apollo Thematic Investing, has spent his career tracking exactly these kinds of non-linear shifts. In this conversation, Rob breaks down the state of AI adoption and what enterprise ROI pressure means for the cycle and investor portfolios. He also discusses two other themes his team is tracking: US reindustrialization and why private capital may be better positioned than public markets to finance it, and the forces that are beginning to reshape finance itself.