(Bloomberg) — Leon Black barely touched his stake in Apollo Global Management Inc. over the decades he turned the firm into an acquisitions giant and became one of Wall Street's richest billionaires.
That has changed since his departure from the New York-based firm.
The Apollo co-founder has sold or given away 9.1 million shares of his multibillion-dollar stock since January, the most in a calendar year since the private equity firm went public more than a decade ago, according to data compiled from Bloomberg from regulatory filings.
Black, 72, parted with the latest piece last month, donating a $118.4 million stake to a philanthropic vehicle. That brought the total value of stock he has offloaded this year to more than $1 billion, based on Apollo's stock price at the time of each transaction.
The unwinding of the transactions signals how Black's focus is increasingly shifting to life outside Apollo after stepping down as the firm's chief executive in 2021 after three decades at the helm. Co-founder Marc Rowan is now CEO.
Read more: Leon Black sells Apollo Global shares for the first time ever
Black has regularly reduced his stake in Apollo since the firm's 2011 initial public offering by donating shares, but had never sold any until earlier this year, opting instead to pledge some of his holdings to to increase his liquidity and to diversify his wealth.
Meanwhile, the roughly 7.5 million shares he has given away since January are already the most in a calendar year since Apollo's listing, with most of that total stemming from a gift in May to his wife, Debra.
Black, who shares voting control with his wife over that stock, still oversees a roughly 14% stake in Apollo, accounting for roughly half of his $15 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. More than a quarter of that holding was given as collateral for loans, the latest filings show.
“Mr. Black continues to believe in Apollo's strategy and supports its executive team,” Whit Clay of Sloane & Co., a spokesman for Black, said in an emailed statement. “These are stock transfers to support his generous philanthropy and for estate planning purposes.”
An Apollo representative declined to comment.
Black's exit from Apollo came after a tumultuous period that included a report from law firm Dechert showing that Black paid convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for financial advice. Black has admitted paying Epstein, who died in 2019, for tax services but denied knowing about his sex crimes.
Read more: Leon Black Mounts Attack on New York The lawyer known for #MeToo
Since leaving Apollo, he has hired the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive. Nikolaos Vasilatos as head of entrepreneurship at his family office, Elysium Management, which also invests in real estate and private equity.
Meanwhile, most of Black's stock gifts, aside from the amount to his wife, have gone to unnamed donor-advised funds, or DAFs, a common American philanthropic vehicle for the wealthy. He and his wife have previously pledged $20 million to help New York hospital workers during the pandemic and donated nearly $50 million a decade or so ago to Dartmouth College for a visual arts center.