Apollo chief warns peers ‘ignore blockchain at your peril’
The billionaire chief of investment giant Apollo has warned the private equity industry to ignore “blockchain at [its] peril” after the firm has thrown its weight behind the technology in recent months.
Marc Rowan, chief executive and co-founder of the New York-based investor, said the technology being rolled out by fintech and blockchain firms would form the basis of the finance industry going forward.
“Many of the rails or the technology or the platforms or the systems that support what’s happening in NFT are actually the precursor to changes in our financial system and we ignore them at our peril,” he told Bloomberg Wealth in an interview.
“We are moving our securitizations onto blockchain. We’re taking stakes and backing challengers to the financial system.”
Rowan said that the technology was not a flash in the pan, adding that fintech and blockchain are “here to stay”.
Apollo has thrown its weight behind blockchain in recent months, with the firm teaming up with San Francisco fintech firm Figure to execute transactions via its affiliated blockchain Provenance.
The two firms executed a mortgage transaction on the blockchain last month, claiming in a statement that the transactions had the potential to “revolutionise the $3tn mortgage ecosystem”.