Apollo throttles withdrawals from $26B private credit fund after exit requests rise to 17%

A $26-billion private credit fund run by alts giant Apollo is moving to limit redemptions following a surge of withdrawal requests during the second quarter, according to a new filing.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission published Monday, the private markets giant said redemption requests from Apollo Debt Solutions reached 16.8% – equivalent to $2.4 billion – during the three-month period.

As reported by Reuters, preliminary data show that paying out those investors would push gross outflows from the fund up to $700 million, more than twice the inflows of $300 million over the same period. 

“Taken together, we expect net outflows from ADS will be approximately $400 million for the second quarter of 2026 and year-to-date, representing 3% of NAV,” the alternative asset manager said in the filing, highlighting a "notable regional split” that saw US onshore clients asking to pull out 4.3%, compared to offshore exit requests that reached 12.5%.

Following those requests, Apollo has decided to cap withdrawals from ADS at 5% of shares, the standard limit for such vehicles.

In the previous quarter, the non-traded business company offering wealthy retail investors the opportunity to put money in higher-yielding private-credit assets faced withdrawal requests amounting to north of 11%. Typically, the fund would allow investors to withdraw some of their money every three months.

The anxiety around BDCs and other semiliquid funds with exposure to private credit has been on the rise since late last year, when headlines around funds owned by Blue Owl and BlackRock first triggered concerns around the broader sector's transparency and lending discipline. There's also the question of their exposure to ​the software industry, where at least some companies' business models face an existential threats from advances in artificial intelligence.

Read more: Private credit appetite cools sharply as investors brace for zombie fund surge

The ADS filing appeared to downplay those concerns among institutional investors, noting expectations that "institutional ‌fundraising ⁠for our direct lending strategies will exceed that of the wealth channel this year."

Danielle Poli, managing director, co-portfolio manager at Oaktree Capital, highlighted that same split, observing more institutions looking to raise their allocations to capitalize on scarcer capital in the market.

“These are longer-term private instruments that give you an attractive yield if you hold them. That’s the trade-off," she recently told CNBC, highlighting the relative difficulty for retail wealth investors looking to chase and stay with the strategy.

Read more: Chekhov’s gun: Incentives and accountability in semi-liquid private credit

Apollo is not the only one to limit investor redemptions from its funds. Among others, the names on that ever-growing list include:

• Switzerland-based Partners Group, which earlier this month disclosed elevated exit pressure for a second fund it manages;
• Blackstone, whose $79 billion BCRED private credit fund saw repurchase requests from clients amounting to 10% of shares outstanding for the quarter ending June 30; 
• Morgan Stanley, which in March decided to limit repurchase requests from its North Haven Private Income Fund to 5%; and
• Blue Owl, which disclosed an outsized amount of exit requests from two of its nontraded BDCs – roughly 20% and 40% – in April.

According to recent filings tracked by 9fin, the average NAV per share has dropped to 92.4% relative to Q1 2025. BDC prices have fallen faster than NAV, suggesting investors expect further pressure to come as nearly all BDCs traded below their current NAVs.

A report by Morningstar earlier this month determined that investors pulled a total of $1.8 billion from the 10 largest direct lending funds during the first quarter, including vehicles sponsored by Blackstone, Cliffwater, and Blue Owl.

“Private credit fund demand began to slow in 2025's second half as concerns over software exposure and lower base rates cooled investors on the asset class,” the report said. “In the first quarter of 2026, net assets for that Morningstar Category dipped by about $1 billion.”