Ares Management Corporation ARES

The business

Ares is the credit specialist among the big alternative managers: two thirds of its $671.3B rides in private credit strategies, direct lending above all, where insurance companies and pensions have redirected their bond allocations. The firm charges management fees on $409.9B of fee-paying assets, and its earnings mix is the steadiest in the group because credit funds charge on deployed capital continuously rather than waiting on exits. The moat is origination scale: middle-market borrowers come to Ares because it can write the whole loan, and lenders of that size are few. The GCP acquisition last year bolted on real assets and digital infrastructure, data centers being the new collateral of choice.