Michael Arougheti

Michael Arougheti co-founded Ares Management in 1997 and has served as CEO and President since 2018, building one of the world's largest and most influential alternative asset management firms with over $450 billion in assets under management. Ares is the dominant player in private credit — the direct lending market that exploded after the 2008 financial crisis as banks retreated from middle-market lending due to tighter regulations. Arougheti was among the first to recognize that post-crisis banking regulations would permanently shrink bank lending to middle-market companies, creating an enormous opportunity for non-bank lenders. Ares's credit platform now manages over $300 billion, making it the world's largest private credit manager. Beyond credit, Ares has built significant platforms in private equity (with a focus on growth equity and buyouts), real estate, and infrastructure. His key decisions involve capital raising and deployment pace in an increasingly competitive private credit market, credit quality management, expansion into new asset classes and geographies, insurance channel growth (similar to Apollo's Athene model), and managing the balance between fee growth and maintaining credit discipline. Ares's stock reflects the secular shift from bank lending to private credit.