Apollo CEO Marc Rowan has been aggressively promoting a $38tn estimate for the total addressable private investment grade market, complete with whitepapers, slide-decks, and LinkedIn infographics. Rowan's educational campaign aims to redefine private credit, but Financial Times Alphaville questions his methodology and numbers, finding them overly ambitious.

The author breaks down the market components: trade finance at $4.9tn, US/European corporate credit at $8.6tn, commercial mortgages at $4tn, consumer credit at $5tn, bank loans at $2.9tn, and asset-backed securities at $1.25tn. Apollo's claim that 95 percent of this market is investment grade draws particular skepticism.

Using insurer balance sheet data, the author calculates a more realistic $5.8tn total for private investment grade credit, plus $2.3tn for private credit funds. This starkly contrasts with Apollo's $40tn figure, which assumes complete replacement of traditional banking systems and financialization of all trade.