It was a moment 11 years in the making: US private equity giant Apollo was about to escape the German banking value trap that had ensnared so many of its peers.
Apollo had already tried twice to float OLB, the lender it had assembled from a string of acquisitions starting in 2014. The first time, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine intervened; in 2023, it was the transatlantic collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse that scuppered an exit.
But in the middle of March this year — before the Trump administration’s trade war derailed markets — the window for listings had reopened and OLB’s bankers were hours away from pulling the trigger on an initial public offering announcement.