Apollo’s Blastoff
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
If you are an ordinary individual investor who wants to share in the wealth created by Leon Black’s private equity firm Apollo Management LP, you’re out of luck, thanks to Senators Baucus and Grassley. The chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee want to raise taxes on investment advisers that are organized as partnerships under section 7704c of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. The tax increase would apply only to firms traded “on an established securities market.”
So Apollo, the Wall Street Journal reports, is planning to sell its shares on a new Goldman Sachs exchange called the “GS Tradable Unregistered Equity OTC Market.” The Journal reports that the shares will be “available only to institutional and other sophisticated investors” and will be “barred to retail, or individual investors.” As so often happens, the attempt by Washington lawmakers to crack down on the superrich ends up hurting the small investor.
