Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Apollo Global Management LLC, the private-equity firm run by Leon Black and Joshua Harris, had a net loss of $96.4 million in the first quarter as the value of its investments declined.

The loss in the quarter ended March 31 compared with a profit of $144 million a year earlier, the New York-based company said yesterday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Unrealized losses on holdings increased and realized gains were reversed as financial markets fell, offsetting higher fees from buying and selling companies and managing buyout and debt funds.

Apollo disclosed the results as it updated plans to become publicly traded amid the worst global market for initial public offerings in four years and a slump in leveraged-buyout deals. Buyout firm KKR & Co. is also moving ahead with a stock listing as announced private-equity deals this year fell 71 percent to $179.4 billion from the same period in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

``There's no doubt the value has gone down since they sold the shares in the first place,'' said Steven Kaplan, a finance professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, referring to Apollo.

Apollo will go public as investors resell stock the company offered privately last year. The shares, which sold for $24 each at that time, have been trading around $14 since April on a private exchange run by New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Apollo increased the number of shares it plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange by 25 percent to 37.3 million, according to yesterday's filing.

Lazard Venture

Apollo also announced it formed a joint venture with Lazard Ltd., the investment bank headed by Bruce Wasserstein, to find private-equity deals in Europe. The new joint venture comes after Apollo's revenue for the quarter fell 88 percent to $15.5 million from $124.9 million a year earlier.

KKR, which said last month it would go public before the end of the year, had a net loss of $117.9 million in the first quarter after earning $814.8 million in the same period in 2007.

KKR co-founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts plan its listing after taking over KKR Private Equity Investors LP, the firm's Amsterdam-listed fund. That fund has dropped 47 percent since its May 2006 IPO. KKR won't raise any new capital in the latest deal, though it will take on the buyout fund's $4.56 billion of assets.

Blackstone Stock

Blackstone Group LP has struggled since it went public in June 2007. Profit excluding some compensation costs fell 75 percent to $165.6 million, or 15 cents a share, from $655 million, or 58 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said Aug. 6. The stock has dropped 41 percent since the IPO.

Black and Harris, former colleagues at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., created Apollo in 1990 to invest in distressed debt and acquire companies through leveraged buyouts. Past deals include the purchase of casino company Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and U.S. real-estate broker Realogy Corp.

Apollo's latest private-equity fund, Fund VII, has raised more than $14 billion, compared with $12.5 billion as of April. The firm is ``investing primarily in senior and subordinated debt securities'' due to ``current supply and demand imbalance,'' the filing said.

Other pending offerings by asset managers include the $1 billion sale of Artio Global Investors Inc., the asset- management arm of Julius Baer Holding Ltd.

HT Capital Corp. is a closed-end fund planning to raise as much as $300 million to invest in start-up investment managers, typically new hedge-fund firms, according to a July 31 regulatory filing.

To contact the reporters on this story: Elizabeth Hester in New York at ehester@bloomberg.net; Jason Kelly in New York at jkelly14@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 13, 2008 09:11 EDT