(Bloomberg) — Apollo Global Management Inc. said that more than $830 billion of its credit assets will be priced daily by the end of September, a move to bring more transparency to opaque credit markets.
The firm, which manages more than $1 trillion in assets, announced the initiative on its first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Apollo has been increasing its efforts to provide liquidity and price transparency in the $1.8 trillion private-credit market, where assets don’t typically change hands, Bloomberg News previously reported.
“That essentially means the totality of our credit business will be 100% daily pricing,” Apollo Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan said on the firm’s first-quarter earnings call with analysts.
The move could pressure rivals to provide similar updates, bringing clarity to a market beset with fears over the assets underpinning funds available to retail investors.
Read More: Apollo Plans to Mark Private Credit Daily, Answering Critics
Apollo plans to provide an estimated daily value for all corporate investment-grade fixed income assets starting June 30, and daily pricing for all direct lending and asset-backed finance assets by Sept. 30, accounting for more than $830 billion of credit assets.
The firm launched a secondary-trading effort last year for the loans it originates, which so far has facilitated over $13 billion of trading volume with banks, asset managers and institutional investors. Earlier this year, the firm partnered with Intercontinental Exchange Inc. to launch ICE Private Credit Intelligence.
Read More: Apollo Joins NYSE Owner ICE on Private Credit Infrastructure
Rowan said Apollo will employ the same methodology that many public companies use for pricing their shares daily. That means observing trades, comparing them to comparable public valuations and looking at general market trends to arrive at a price.
“We will produce a price that is the same price in many instances that you see for public securities,” he said. “And every day it gets better.”
Rowan pointed to the equity markets as an example of private firms, such as Citadel Securities and Jane Street Group, taking over market-making from the big banks. The same phenomenon is under way for credit markets, he said.
“We’ve gotten the market going,” he said, but “standardized data and ultimately jealousy are going to cause market-making competition.”
He added that he’s starting to see competitors make markets as well, though some of Apollo’s peers are “resisting this transparency.”
Rowan said that press coverage of high-profile blowups in private credit, along with anticipated regulatory scrutiny, drove the decision to add daily prices.
