Apollo Global Management Lawsuits: Epstein, Founders’ Payout, Antitrust

Apollo Global Management is defending several major lawsuits in 2026. The most prominent are securities fraud class actions alleging the firm and its top executives misled investors for years about their ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Apollo also faces a Delaware shareholder suit challenging a $570 million payout to its three founders, a Delaware insurance case accusing an Apollo affiliate of running an illegal “human life wagering” scheme, and an antitrust suit from Optimum Communications targeting a creditor cooperation agreement. A separate SEC enforcement matter over off-channel communications was resolved in January 2025 for $8.5 million.

The Epstein Securities Fraud Class Actions

Multiple securities fraud class actions were filed against Apollo, CEO Marc Rowan, and co-founder and former CEO Leon Black in early 2026. The lead case, Feldman v. Apollo Global Management, et al., was filed March 2, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:26-cv-01692).¹²³⁴

The complaints allege violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and SEC Rule 10b-5. The core claim: Apollo and its executives repeatedly told the market the firm “never did any business with Jeffrey Epstein,” and those statements were false.¹

What Triggered the Lawsuits

The suits followed a batch of documents the U.S. Department of Justice released on January 30, 2026, that included millions of Epstein-related emails.⁵ On February 1, 2026, the Financial Times reported that senior Apollo executives, including Rowan and partner Sanjay Patel, had held wide-ranging discussions with Epstein throughout the 2010s about the firm’s tax arrangements, internal financial documents, and potential tax inversion strategies.⁶ CNN reported on February 21, 2026, that Epstein had received internal Apollo financial documents and hosted meetings between Apollo executives and international private banks at his Manhattan townhouse.⁷

The Perez complaint alleges Epstein reviewed internal Apollo financial records, participated in 2016 talks about a potential tax inversion, hosted meetings between Apollo leadership and Edmond de Rothschild executives, was consulted on Athene Holding’s pre-IPO share offering, and pitched Apollo’s co-founders a tax plan that could have saved them up to $300 million in exchange for a 25 percent success fee.² The lawsuits allege these revelations drove Apollo’s stock down more than 15 percent over three weeks, wiping out roughly $12 billion in market capitalization.⁸

The Gap With the 2021 Dechert Report

The claims hinge on the distance between what Apollo told investors in 2021 and what the DOJ files showed in 2026. In October 2020, Leon Black asked Apollo’s board Conflicts Committee to retain outside counsel. The committee hired Dechert LLP, which concluded Apollo had never retained Epstein for services and that Epstein had never invested in Apollo-managed funds. The report found Black had personally paid Epstein $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for tax, estate planning, and philanthropic advice, and had lent him $30.5 million, but found no evidence that any other Apollo executive retained Epstein.⁹ Apollo incorporated those findings into a January 25, 2021 Form 8-K.¹⁰

The class action complaints allege the Dechert conclusions were misleading because they obscured the degree to which Rowan and others interacted with Epstein on firm business. The Feldman complaint also points to an October 2020 earnings call in which Apollo’s head of investor relations, Gary Stein, denied any business relationship with Epstein, and it alleges Rowan signed Sarbanes-Oxley certifications while knowing or recklessly disregarding that Apollo’s public statements about Epstein were materially false.¹¹¹

Apollo’s Response and Status

On February 18, 2026, Apollo President James Zelter sent a letter to clients and partners saying there was “nothing new” in the DOJ document release. Apollo’s position is that neither Rowan “nor anyone else at Apollo (excluding Leon Black) had either a business or personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.” The firm acknowledged that in “select instances,” Rowan and other employees provided Epstein with information in connection with Epstein’s tax work for Black, but said all other requests from Epstein to work with Apollo co-founders were “declined at every turn.”¹²

As of mid-2026, the defendants had not filed a response in Perez, and no court had ruled on any of the claims.² The lead plaintiff deadline was May 1, 2026.³ Three pension funds have joined a related suit accusing Apollo of downplaying its Epstein connections.¹³

Teachers’ Unions Ask the SEC to Investigate

On February 17, 2026, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the SEC’s Division of Enforcement requesting a formal investigation into Apollo’s Epstein-related disclosures. The unions, whose pension fund members have committed at least $27.5 billion to Apollo, argued the firm’s 2021 8-K filing was “deficient, inaccurate, and incomplete.” The letter cited specific interactions drawn from the DOJ files, including a September 2013 meeting at Apollo’s offices, a February 2016 collaboration with Edmond de Rothschild to finance a potential Apollo inversion, and a March 2016 request from Rowan for Epstein’s input on “Apollo calculations for a tax receivable agreement.”⁵ The SEC has not publicly said whether it opened an investigation in response.¹⁴

The $570 Million Founders’ Payout Suit

In Delaware Chancery Court, shareholders have challenged a $570 million payout made to Apollo’s three founders — Leon Black, Josh Harris, and Marc Rowan — in connection with the firm’s 2022 corporate restructuring.¹⁵ On January 1, 2022, Apollo completed a conversion from a publicly traded partnership to a standard C-corporation with a single class of common stock, implemented alongside the merger of Apollo and Athene Holding. As part of the conversion, holders of internal operating-group units transferred those units for a total of $570 million, payable in thirteen equal annual installments starting January 1, 2022.¹⁶

The shareholder lawsuit alleges the payment was unnecessary and enriched the founders at the company’s expense. Apollo has moved to dismiss, arguing an independent board committee negotiated the payments as part of a legitimate restructuring.¹⁵ As of June 2026, the court had not ruled on the motion.¹⁷

The two big Apollo cases intersect on one point. The Financial Times reported in February 2026 that the tax receivable agreement Apollo purchased from its founders for $570 million was itself a subject of Epstein’s advisory discussions with Rowan in 2016.⁶

The “Human Life Wagering” Insurance Case

In Estate of Martha Barotz v. Wilmington Savings Fund Society FSB (No. 2024-0447, Delaware Chancery Court), the estate of a deceased policyholder has accused Apollo of conducting a “widespread fraudulent human life wagering conspiracy.”¹⁸ The suit targets stranger-originated life insurance, or STOLI. In these transactions, middlemen pay senior citizens an upfront sum to take out a life insurance policy, which is then sold to downstream investors who collect the death benefit when the insured person dies.

The complaint describes a specific case. In 2006, when Barotz was in her 70s, a trust called “Life Accumulation Trust III” took out a policy on her life, paying her 3 percent of the death benefit. That policy was sold in 2011 to Financial Credit Investment (FCI), an Apollo affiliate. When Barotz died in 2018, FCI collected $5 million.¹⁸ The broader portfolio at issue is valued at approximately $20 billion, and the lawsuit characterizes STOLI as a violation of longstanding public policy against wagering on the lives of strangers.¹⁹

The estate previously won a judgment of nearly $7 million in related 2020 litigation. Apollo says that earlier ruling found only that the original 2006 policy issuance was improper and found no wrongdoing by the fund manager. Apollo has called the current allegations “baseless” and “disingenuous.”¹⁸ By December 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court was hearing arguments in the case.²⁰

The Optimum Communications Antitrust Case

In November 2025, Optimum Communications filed suit in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:25-cv-09785) accusing a group of its creditors of forming an illegal cartel. The named defendants include Apollo Capital Management, Ares Management, BlackRock Financial Management, and GoldenTree Asset Management.²¹

The dispute centers on a July 2024 lender cooperation agreement. Optimum alleges the agreement functions as a group boycott: it requires a two-thirds supermajority vote before any member can transact with the borrower, prohibits members from selling debt to non-members, and effectively shuts Optimum out of the leveraged-finance market. Optimum claims the cooperating lenders collectively control roughly 88 percent of the U.S. leveraged-finance market. The claims are brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 4 of the Clayton Act, with Optimum seeking treble damages.²¹

In February 2026, Optimum amended its complaint to add a tortious interference claim, alleging the lender group used the threat of withholding “hundreds of millions of dollars in existing or potential business” to pressure Kirkland & Ellis, Optimum’s transaction counsel, into withdrawing, and pressured at least two other law firms to prevent them from taking over.²² The defendants moved to dismiss on February 6, 2026, and industry trade associations including the LSTA, SIFMA, and MFA filed an amicus brief in March 2026 supporting dismissal.²³

The Settled SEC Off-Channel Communications Action

Apollo also settled a regulatory matter with the SEC. On January 13, 2025, the SEC issued an order finding that since at least December 2019, Apollo personnel, including senior staff, had routinely conducted business using unapproved channels such as personal-device text messages, in violation of recordkeeping requirements under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The SEC found that Apollo’s failure to preserve these communications may have “compromised and delayed” Commission investigations where Apollo had received subpoenas.²⁴

Apollo was censured, paid a civil penalty of $8.5 million, and was required to conduct comprehensive internal audits of its communications compliance policies. The order explicitly bars Apollo from arguing in any related investor lawsuit that its $8.5 million penalty should reduce compensatory damages owed to investors.²⁴

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