Apollo Has Never Been More Bullish on Europe, Seminara Says

(Bloomberg) — Apollo Global Management Inc has never been more bullish on Europe in its 20 years of investing in the continent, according to the region’s head.

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“I think Europe has woken up on the need to invest,” Robert Seminara said at Bloomberg’s Future of Finance conference in Frankfurt on Tuesday. “You see the German government really leaning in and it’s not just the dollars – it’s the attitude, it’s the willingness to kind of help private capital really advance in the market.”

Seminara pointed to spending on defense, infrastructure as well as the green energy transformation as driving the next wave of investment in Europe. The region’s relatively shallower capital markets compared to the US will also mean there is more space for major investment firms to step in to help in with financing, according to Seminara.

The euro area’s private sector expanded at the quickest pace in 16 months as outperformance in German services compensated for a slump in France, data out on Tuesday showed.

The region was clouded by uncertainty over US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies in the first half of 2025. While activity benefited from front-loaded demand at the start of the year, a reversal of that trend pushed Germany into contraction in the second quarter.

Apollo has already been making inroads, approaching $50 billion of large corporate investment in Europe alone, Seminara said at the Bloomberg event. Among the recent major transactions are a €3.2 billion ($3.8 billion) investment with German energy company RWE AG, as part of a joint venture to finance the expansion of the nation’s power grid.

In June, the US private capital firm also agreed to help Electricite de France SA finance the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant and other investments.

As part of the push, Apollo is looking to open more offices on the continent including one “shortly” in Frankfurt, Seminara said. The firm has already opened a new site in Zurich, alongside its principal European headquarters in London.

As a value investor, however, Seminara said Apollo is staying away from equity investments in AI and defense plays that have been at the center of investor fervor in recent months. Defense companies in particular have surged in Europe, with the German government’s pledge to double its annual defense budget within four years.

Instead, Apollo is focusing on companies that can service these areas, with Seminara citing its recent move to acquire cooling equipment company Kelvion. The previously embattled firm, which underwent a major debt restructuring in 2019, now has a fertile niche for cooling data centers, according to Seminara.

“I think Europe for a long time has been kind of on the back burner in terms of investors’ mindset and it’s really up to Germans, Europeans more broadly to really seize the moment,” he said. “If you do this right, you can really grow the economy, which is really what’s needed to address a lot of the issues in Europe today.”

–With assistance from Fion Li.

(Adds details about European economy in fourth and fifth paragraph.)

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