In “Democracy In America,” Tocqueville wrote in glowing terms about “decay giving assistance to life” and, specifically, about how life ultimately finds nourishment beneath “the lifeless bark.” Perhaps lifeless bark such as the detritus we once knew to be that bombed-out shell of a brokerage house, Drexel Burham Lambert? Nourishment such as what can only be well provided by three well-financed and driven men working for 18 years on a goliath? And life such as that amply offered by an IPO, giver of life to corporate coffers and countless wallets? We suspect so.

Private-equity firm Apollo Management LP pushed to join the ranks of publicly traded investing shops Tuesday, filing for an initial public offering of stock valued at about $418 million.

The move should unlock billions of personal wealth for Apollo's three main owners -- Leon Black, Josh Harris, and Marc Rowan -- who founded the firm 18 years ago out of the wreckage of the Drexel Burham Lambert brokerage house.

The latest move nonetheless comes at an awkward time for their breed of money-management firms. Private-equity shops like Apollo were able to feast on easily available debt to fund a spate of huge corporate buyouts over the past three years. But many of those deals are already in trouble, such as Apollo's own $1.3 billion purchase of retailer Linens 'n Things and an ill-fated $6.65 billion purchase of real-estate firm Realogy Corp.

Such stories have made public investors skittish about buying into private-equity firms. The shares of Blackstone Group LP and Fortress Investment Group LLC are down substantially from their public offerings last year. Blackstone, for instance, trades at about 60% of its $31 offering price last summer. Apollo had already broadcast its intentions to list publicly, having traded on a private Goldman Sachs Group Inc. exchange since last summer. Those shares are down more than 40%.

The success of Apollo's share offering will be closely watched by other buyout firms such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which filed for an IPO last July but was stopped in its tracks when the credit markets seized up.

In its 406-page securities filing, Apollo shrugged off worries about an economic downturn and its inability to do traditional limited buyouts, instead embracing the period as a time of opportunity. "Investors should understand that we may significantly increase the pace of investment when the 'prevailing wisdom' is to sell and may decrease the pace of investment or sell large portions of our funds' portfolios when the 'prevailing wisdom' is to buy," the filing states.

The partners at Apollo make a base cash salary of $100,000 a year, but have a windfall as part of the reorganization of the firm in July in preparation for capital-raising. Although individual compensation is not yet broken out, Apollo's partners will get stock and restricted stock units valued at a total of $986 million. The firm's restricted-stock units have long vesting periods of six years, which is about twice the normal length of such units on Wall Street.

Last year the company posted revenue of $637 million, with $294 million of that figure from the firm's share of investment gains. The remainder came from management, transaction and advisory fees. Economic net income, a measure of profitability that excludes income taxes and other noncash charges related to compensation, fell by 59% from 2006 to $153 million. By comparison, Blackstone's revenue was $3.1 billion, with economic net income of $2.1 billion.

Since 1990, Apollo's funds have generated a 29% net internal rate of return, after fees, from their inception through Dec. 31, 2007. That compares with a 9% return for the Standard & Poor's 500-Stock Index. That performance has proved a windfall for Mr. Black, a 56-year-old who is at the heart of Apollo's culture and investment decisions. Mr. Black made his name at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., where he helped the investment-banking firm popularize the use of junk bonds, the high-risk, high-return securities that fueled the 1980s leveraged-buyout boom. After Drexel fell apart in the wake of insider-trading charges that left Mr. Black unscathed, he founded Apollo.

Publicity-averse and a sometimes halting public speaker, Mr. Black has navigated through the intertwined worlds of New York finance and elite society.

Underneath this social advancement is economic competition with a handful of leading private-investment funds, such as Blackstone Group, KKR, TPG (the former Texas Pacific Group) and Bain Capital Partners LLC. On that score, the filing shows how Apollo, once dismissed by rivals as a lower-tier bond-investing shop, has grown up.

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