Athene, a retirement services company, and Apollo Global Management, an investment firm, agreed to acquire a majority stake in Aqua Finance, a fast-growing consumer lending platform, from The Blackstone Group for $1bn. "Aqua Finance is an exciting opportunity for Athene to invest in a leading consumer finance platform, to provide capital and expertise to continue to grow the business, and to execute on our strategy with Apollo to invest in high-quality origination platforms," Jim Belardi, Athene CEO.