By Jonathan Stempel and Isla Binnie
NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - Shareholders sued Apollo Global Management and its billionaire co-founders Leon Black and Marc Rowan on Monday in a proposed class action for allegedly defrauding them for nearly five years about the private capital firm's business dealings with disgraced sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
According to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, the shareholders alleged the defendants falsely denied in several regulatory filings
in 2021 and 2022 ever doing business with Epstein, though Epstein "was heavily involved and frequently communicated with Apollo Global's senior leadership" about Apollo's business during the 2010s.
The shareholders said Apollo's stock fell about 15% over three weeks in February, wiping out about $12 billion of market value, as the truth came out.
A spokesperson for Apollo and Rowan, its chief executive, declined to comment. Whit Clay, a spokesperson for Black, declined to comment. Rowan succeeded Black as chief executive in 2021.
Apollo said in a February 18 letter to clients that neither Rowan nor anyone else at Apollo other than Black had a business or personal relationship with Epstein.
It also said that "in select instances" Rowan and other Apollo employees provided information to Epstein related to his tax work for Black, but that when Epstein sought to do work for other co-founders he was "declined at every turn."
Black has denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein's criminal conduct.
Shareholders led by Solomon Feldman said in the lawsuit that Apollo's regulatory filings referred to a January 2021 review by the Dechert law firm, which found Black paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning, but Apollo never retained Epstein for any services and Epstein never invested in Apollo-managed funds.
Apollo's assurances allegedly proved false following the U.S. Department of Justice's January 30 release of a large cache of documents, videos and images related to Epstein.
The complaint cites media reports on Epstein's alleged written and in-person communications with Apollo officials during the mid-2010s, and demands by teachers unions that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigate Apollo.
Though the proposed class period began in May 2021, after Black stepped down as Apollo's chief executive and chairman, the complaint said he remained liable as a "control person" with 7% of Apollo's stock as of April 2025.
Apollo's share price decline in February coincided with the latest stage of a months-long slide among large alternative asset managers.
Investors in the sector have worried about growth prospects, underwriting standards in private lending, and whether AI would disrupt software businesses that the firms have lent to or purchased.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. The office of the New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Isla Binnie in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Christian Schmollinger)
