God of War, King of Credit: Inside Ares’ Global Push

In a recent interview, Ares Co-President Blair Jacobson sat down with Simon Brewer to discuss how the firm evaluates opportunity across geographies and asset classes, and what its evolution means for institutions and wealth clients increasingly turning to private credit as a core allocation.

Jacobson’s own entry into alternatives is classic Wall Street rather than the modern quant pipeline. Raised in a middle-class American family with an early understanding that he would need to earn his own way, he gravitated toward finance. After graduating from WilliamsCollege with majors in political science and economics and a minor in art history, he joined Kidder Peabody in M&A and then honed his technical grounding at Chicago Booth to “learn finance where a lot of it was invented.”

The pivotal shift occurred in 2001, when Jacobson joined Citibank private equity and credit business, firmly steering him into the private markets world. In 2005, he moved to London. That early physical presence in Europe would later prove invaluable to Ares’ non-US build-out. Today, the firm employs around 700 people in Europe and manages more than $120 billion across teams in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm,Amsterdam, Madrid and Milan.

A major part of the discussion centred on the state of Europe’s financial plumbing, with the global financial crisis acting as the catalyst for a shift toward private capital. As banks failed, retreated to home markets or fell under state control, new regulations made mid-market corporate lending increasingly unattractive. With the banking arena shrinking, Ares benefited from the shift. The firm had capital to deploy and hired many former bankers who already knew the companies and their owners. The firm had already committed to building a local presence, opening European offices from 2006 onwards and hiring native-language teams who understood legal systems, corporate cultures and ownership structures across jurisdictions.

Europe still struggles with fragmentation - securitisation limits, the slow path toward a capital markets union and uneven cross-border regulation - yet private funds are able to navigate these complexities with far greater flexibility. Jacobson estimates that while the US private credit market is 90–95% penetrated, Europe still sits closer to 60–65%, leaving a substantial runway ahead.

Ares’ sweet spot continues to be the mid-market: companies large enough to be diversified and growing, often private-equity-backed, but not so large that public markets are an obvious solution. This is also the segment most constrained by post-crisis banking rules. Ares recently raised a €30 billion European fund, enabling Ares to support substantial individual financings while maintaining a diversified portfolio. Investors expect a premium over traded credit, and that defines the firm’s underwriting discipline and sector focus.

Beyond core lending, Ares has expanded into areas that attract greater public attention, none larger than sports, media and entertainment, with investments in around 15 sports leagues. Yet the approach is firmly credit-first: Ares seldom wants pure equity, preferring structured positions with substantial equity beneath it in the capital stack.This matters in European football, where relegation risk can severely disrupt cash flows. Ares targets clubs with longstanding top-flight positions and broad revenue bases, underwriting downside cases rather than fantasy valuations. The same principle applies to music rights: diversified catalogues with long histories offer predictable cash flows in the streaming era, making them suitable collateral for lending.

Another core area is the infrastructure super cycle, driven not only by ageing physical assets but also by the need for digital infrastructure, energy transition and power-intensive data centres.With government balance sheets stretched, private capital, particularly infrastructure debt, must step in. Yields may be lower than in corporate credit, but long-term contracts and investment-grade counterparties offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. A further trend is the growth of secondaries and continuation vehicles, which give LPs in long-dated funds more control over liquidity and duration. What began in private equity is now extending into private credit as the asset class matures.

This expansion of private credit has inevitably drawn greater scrutiny. Jacobson stresses that Ares’ BDC has weathered the GFC, Brexit, Covid and the inflation shock with minimal losses and consistent dividends, outcomes he attributes to disciplined underwriting, broad diversification and a stable, long-term capital base. As private credit pushes further into wealth and retirement markets, he argues that maintaining those same disciplines will be essential.

The message from Jacobson is clear:behind the narrative of private credit replacing banks lies the granularity and operationally intensive reality. It is about local teams having 1,400conversations to make 50 loans. It is about structuring in sports and music, not trophy-hunting. It is about data centres and energy transition as much as leveraged buyouts. And it is about a firm which, for all its war-god branding, still defines its mission in the simplest of terms: don’t lose money - “our goal in life is capital preservation.”

Listen to the full episode here.

About Ares Management Corporation

Ares Management is a leading global alternative investment manager offering clients complementary primary and secondary investment solutions across the credit, real estate, private equity and infrastructure asset classes.

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