Marc Rowan: the humble Apollo CEO who would be US Treasury secretary

efinancialcareers.com:

Marc Rowan, the Apollo Global Management CEO, may soon be US Treasury Secretary. The Financial Times reports that he's the preferred candidate for the job. Bloomberg says that Rowan has his Treasury Secretary interview today, along with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh.

Get Morning Coffee  ☕  in your inbox. Sign up here.

Rowan isn't the sort of person to thrust himself into the limelight. He spent three decades at Apollo before being appointed CEO in 2021, and allegedly wasn't keen on assuming the top job there. The FT described him in October as professorial and more like an architect than a banker. If Rowan becomes Treasury secretary, it will presumably therefore be out of a sense of calling and national duty rather than the pursuit of self-aggrandizement.

It will also be the end of an era. Rowan appears to enjoy being Apollo CEO. Speaking last year to David Rubenstein he said the job was «amazing» and the «best thing» he'd ever done. True to form, he then added that the role was «very humbling:» no one teaches you how to be a CEO. «I am told that I follow a service model,» he said. «The only thing I can do here is create an environment where everyone else can succeed.»

As Treasury secretary, Rowan would be responsible for US public expenditure. He would likely be wary of fiscal expansionism, particularly if the Federal Reserve is also cutting rates. Speaking last week to Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, Rowan noted that the US has printed «eight trillion dollars over a period of time» and that «random companies have multibillion valuations overnight.» In October, he told Bloomberg that cutting rates at a time of fiscal stimulation seemed unnecessary and risked 'accelerating the