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Apollo Global Management<\/a> Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan said the best investors operate in places such as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, contending US institutions have become too focused on benchmarks.<\/p>\n At the start of his career, Rowan \u201cthought the single best investors in the world were in the US,\u201d he said in an interview Tuesday with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. \u201cThat\u2019s no longer the case.\u201d<\/p>\n Apollo and other private equity firms have turned to the Middle East, Asia and wealthy individuals to raise funds, as institutional investors remain over-allocated to the asset class. Deal-making evaporated last year due to higher interest rates. In turn, distributions to institutional investors fell, keeping them from committing money to new funds.<\/p>\n Rowan said Tuesday that institutional investors in both the US and Europe have become beholden to benchmarks. \u201cBenchmarks force you to do the same thing that everyone else is doing because you don\u2019t want to be outside the norm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Moreover, he said, \u201cFamily offices are where all the great things in the investment marketplace are happening today.\u201d<\/p>\n For its part, Apollo fell short of a $25 billion target for its 10th flagship private equity fund last year, raising about $20 billion. The firm has pushed to tap wealthy individuals with a variety of strategies, including its flagship equity replacement strategy called Apollo Aligned Alternatives.<\/p>\n The Apollo CEO\u2019s profile has risen recently beyond the private equity universe. He\u2019s spoken out in support of Israel, demanding the resignation of leaders of his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, over their responses to allegations of antisemitism on campus.<\/p>\n Rowan told Rubenstein, who hosts a show on Bloomberg TV, that he\u2019d serve if the president of the US asked him to chair the Federal Reserve, become Secretary Treasury or take another position. He said he doesn\u2019t identify as a Republican or Democrat.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in a very confusing time politically, but at the same time, when the dust settles from this election, something tells me we will need as a country to turn our attention to the fiscal disorder of our house,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The US economy is in \u201creasonable shape\u201d due to the need to build infrastructure, semiconductor plants and electric vehicle manufacturing, which will create jobs, Rowan said. The financial markets \u201cmarch to the beat of their own drummer,\u201d driven by the Fed, liquidity, interest rates and money flow, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can get financial market corrections without corrections in the real economy,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s where we\u2019re heading.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSubscribe to the CFO Daily newsletter to keep up with the trends, issues, and executives shaping corporate finance. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n