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Ares Management is a big money manager that invests other people's money in loans, private companies, real estate, and infrastructure, and earns fees for doing it.
Ares Management is a money manager — but not the kind that mostly buys public stocks. It runs a giant machine that gathers money from pensions, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and wealthy individuals, then lends it out or invests it in private companies, real estate, and infrastructure. It earns money mainly through management fees charged on the roughly half-trillion dollars it oversees, plus "performance fees" — a cut of the profits when its funds do well. Think of it as a mix between a bank that makes private loans and a fund manager that buys whole businesses.
The business comes in a few flavors. Its biggest engine is credit: making loans to companies that need cash but may not want to borrow from a traditional bank, including fast-growing "private credit" lending. It also runs private equity funds that buy companies outright, real estate funds, and infrastructure funds. Clients choose Ares because it can write big checks quickly and has deep expertise in niche lending markets where banks have pulled back. The company has grown fast, partly by buying other managers, and it now ranks among the largest alternative asset managers in the world.
Here's the neat part about the business model: much of its fee income is "sticky" — investors lock up money for years, so Ares keeps earning fees even when markets wobble, and it holds a chunk of its own money in its funds so it profits alongside clients. It uses its cash flow to pay a dividend, fund new fund launches, and make acquisitions — like its recent push into infrastructure and its deal to buy a big private credit rival, which meaningfully expanded its size. The main risks are simple: if markets seize up or borrowers struggle to repay, performance fees shrink and fundraising slows.
Saved answer · last researched 18 Oct 2026