Mississippi’s public pension system remains heavily invested in one of the world’s largest asset managers even as the state accuses the company and two of its most prominent executives of concealing the extent of their ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to federal court filings that have never been publicly acknowledged or disclosed by the state.
The $37.6 billion Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi, or PERS, joined a federal securities lawsuit against Apollo Global Management this spring, claiming its holdings in the company’s stock have been devalued by millions of dollars because its current CEO, Marc Rowan, and its former chief executive, Leon Black, misled investors about their relationships with the convicted sex offender.
PERS claims that these alleged misrepresentations eased investor sentiment in Apollo at the time and led to an artificial increase in its stock price, before leveling out years later, according to court filings.
Lawyers say those misrepresentations ultimately cost Mississippi’s pension system about $2.78 million.
It is not known whether PERS’ investment managers were duped by Apollo executives’ Epstein denial or were simply enticed to invest in what they thought was a well-valued stock, only to file suit years later when losses began to mount.
Apollo stock
Mississippi’s pension system began buying Apollo shares in June 2020, roughly a year after major news organizations had reported connections between Black, Apollo and Epstein and 10 months after the 66-year-old, longtime friend of President Donald Trump died. Apollo stock was $46 per share.
PERS continued buying company stock even as additional details emerged, according to court filings. PERS made its largest single purchase in late 2024, acquiring roughly $9.2 million worth of Apollo at $171 a share, about a week after it hit an all-time high.
PERS still held about 49,000 Apollo shares as of Feb. 21, 2026, according to court records.
In its lawsuit, PERS alleges that Apollo and its executives repeatedly made “materially false and misleading statements” about their connections to Epstein, including denials that Apollo itself had done business with him.
“Defendants denied that Apollo ever did business with Epstein and hired Dechert LLP to conduct an investigation into Black’s relationship with Epstein,” lawyers for PERS wrote in court filings, referring to a January 2021 Apollo-commissioned report about the allegations.
The lawyers contend that statements made in interviews, news releases and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission concealed a substantially deeper relationship than investors had been led to believe existed.
PERS seeks to become lead plaintiff in the litigation, a position that would give the Mississippi pension system a central role in representing investors who say they were harmed by Apollo’s statements. Its lawyers argue that PERS is well suited to lead the case because it suffered one of the largest losses among investors seeking the role. Under federal securities law, investors with the largest financial interest, such as public pension systems, frequently become lead plaintiffs in class-action cases.
Davetta Lee, compliance counsel for PERS, declined to answer questions from The Mississippi Independent about why the pension system remains invested in Apollo or what due diligence it conducted before making its investments.
“We respectfully refer you to the Mississippi Attorney General’s office for questions about litigation,” Lee wrote in an email.
The state attorney general represents PERS in legal proceedings but can retain outside lawyers, often under contingency-fee agreements. The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch did not respond to questions from The Mississippi Independent. Fitch, a Republican, announced in August that she is running for governor in 2027.
The case represents a rare Mississippi link to the sordid Epstein saga. Some of Epstein’s staff in the U.S. Virgin Islands sent their children to high school and college in Mississippi, but other potential links remain unexplained. Brad Wechsler, an Apollo board member who managed Black’s family office, sent Epstein an email in which he mentioned “Financial Planning” for a “Mississippi info request” in response to an email about Athene—an Apollo-owned company.
What the Epstein files revealed
The catalyst for the case against Apollo took on new significance after the U.S. Justice Department released millions of pages of records related to Epstein at the end of January 2026, including emails detailing previously undisclosed interactions involving Rowan, Black and other Apollo executives.
The records describe contact between Rowan and Epstein dating back to at least September 2013, when the two apparently met at Apollo’s offices. They met again five days later. Rowan and Black had breakfast with Epstein the following month.
By early 2016, Rowan and Epstein were exchanging messages about tax matters and business interests involving Apollo and related companies. Other correspondence concerned tax arrangements that could potentially have saved Apollo’s founders hundreds of millions of dollars.
In February 2026, after renewed scrutiny prompted by the document releases, the company said that neither Rowan nor anyone else at Apollo, other than Black, had a business or personal relationship with Epstein. Apollo said Rowan and other employees had provided information to Epstein only in connection with Epstein’s tax work for Black.
What PERS already knew
By the time PERS began investing in Apollo in June 2020, Black’s relationship with Epstein was already a matter of intense international news coverage. Bloomberg reporting in the summer of 2019 revealed that Epstein had visited Apollo’s New York headquarters, met Black there and pitched tax strategies to company executives. Black publicly acknowledged that Epstein had advised him personally on matters involving family trusts, taxes and philanthropy.
Those assurances did not satisfy every institutional investor. In mid-October 2020, Pennsylvania’s Public School Employees’ Retirement System, or PSERS, immediately suspended Apollo investments while it awaited the results of an outside investigation.
A little more than a week later, with scrutiny intensifying, Black addressed the relationship again during an Apollo earnings call. He called his continued association with Epstein after the 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor a “serious mistake,” but maintained that Epstein had never done business with Apollo.
Though Pennsylvania froze its investments in Apollo in 2020 following the Epstein revelations and questions about his relationship with the company, and despite Black’s admission, Mississippi’s pension managers took a different course: They continued accumulating Apollo stock.
The January 2021 independent investigation also disclosed that Black had paid Epstein $158 million for tax, estate-planning and related services—far more than the $50 million and $75 million Black had previously declared. Black stepped down as Apollo’s chief executive in March 2021 with Rowan succeeding him.
PERS continued investing.
A profitable stock, until it wasn’t
Apollo shares climbed sharply during 2021, rising about 65 percent between January and October. PERS added several thousand shares during that period and more in 2022. The pension system appears to have made relatively few purchases during Apollo’s rapid appreciation in 2023 and early 2024.
Then came its biggest purchase.
In December 2024, after Apollo shares had just hit a record high, PERS purchased approximately 54,000 shares at about $171 each, an investment of roughly $9.2 million.
By early April 2025, Apollo shares collapsed to $108.
That decline matters because PERS now attributes about $2.78 million in investment losses to Apollo, Rowan and Black’s alleged misrepresentations about Epstein. PERS kept buying Apollo stock after the collapse.
Yet Apollo’s share price was moving amid forces that extended well beyond the Epstein controversy. By then, Epstein’s close friend, President Trump, had won the election and was promising to restart his global tariff wars. By April 2025, financial markets faced growing uncertainty about what those tariffs would look like, economic growth and the possibility of a recession. Apollo, whose sprawling businesses span private equity, private credit, insurance and other investments, would be heavily exposed to that level of global economic unrest. Analysts say that led to the selloff.
Apollo shares have recovered much of their 2025 decline, though they remain well below the steep price PERS paid at the end of 2024.
A federal court will ultimately determine how much of that money was lost because investors did not know the full story about Epstein and how much was lost for reasons that had nothing to do with him.
Image: Apollo Global Management headquarters and Jeffrey Epstein (via Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Department of Justice)
https://economicsisfun.substack.com/p/the-real-leon-black-and-marc-rowan?r=7p2czy&utm_medium=ios Great work!