Apollo Global Management demands 30 million US dollars in damages from two former top employees of its insurance subsidiary Athene.

The allegations concern sensitive materials such as evaluation models, bid documents, and actuarial analyses used by Apollo in large acquisitions. An expert appointed by Apollo spoke of an "act of industrial espionage that is hardly imaginable in the private equity business.

Siddiqui left in 2017 after a break with Apollo co-founder Marc Rowan. Together with Ming Dang, he had already worked on founding Caldera during his time at Apollo, as an arbitration tribunal determined in 2019. Although the tribunal spoke of breaches of duty, it only imposed fines of around 1 million US dollars – far from the 300 million that Apollo had demanded.

In the current lawsuit, Apollo alleges that Cernich and Tseng were actively part of the network that, among other things, used private email accounts, fake identities, and manipulated metadata to obtain internal documents. Caldera used this information to negotiate with investors like GIC or Warburg Pincus and to explore billion-dollar acquisitions, including American Equity Investment Life, Fidelity & Guaranty, and Talcott Resolution, all targets that Apollo also had in its sights.

While Caldera ultimately failed, Siddiqui and his associates ironically ended up at Talcott years later. Today, Siddiqui leads the business with over 100 billion USD in life insurance liabilities there – in direct competition with Apollo.

The defense of Cernich and Tseng argues that Apollo is merely attempting to make a "second attempt" after the moderate success in arbitration. Furthermore, the settlement negotiated by Siddiqui in 2018 also applies to his associates.