Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan said that this year “has really marked the end of an era” for the private equity business.

This follows more than a decade of tailwinds from ultra-lose monetary and fiscal policy – with quantitative easing, close-to-zero interest rates and fiscal stimulus. He says these tailwinds are no longer exist: we are now in an environment with higher rates, lower growth and globalization in retreat.

These comments were made on the conference call for Apollo’s second quarter earnings. Apollo is one of the world’s largest private equity firms – with over $600bn of assets under management.

Rowan went on to talk about this being “a great time for private credit” – an area in which Apollo has invested heavily over the last few years. Apollo has invested over $8bn to build its own private credit origination ecosystem. In selling Apollo’s strategy, he used food vendors as an analogy for the range of private credit investors – with it being possible to be a hot dog stand (with lower barriers to entry) or a Michelin-starred restaurant (with high barriers to entry). He sees Apollo’s ecosystem as creating high barriers to entry, whereas pure leveraged loan investors have low barriers to entry.