(HedgeCo.Net) Ares Management is set to become the latest alternative asset manager to join the S&P 500, marking another milestone in the mainstreaming of private credit and alternatives in public equity benchmarks.Private Equity Wire

S&P Dow Jones Indices has announced that Ares will enter the index before the market opens on December 11, replacing a legacy constituent and cementing the firm’s status as one of the sector’s marquee franchises. Ares, which has grown rapidly through its flagship credit strategies, real assets and secondaries offerings, joins a cohort of listed managers that now command hundreds of billions in fee-paying assets and trade alongside global banks and asset-management blue chips.

The index move follows a strong period for the “public GPs” – the handful of large, listed alternative asset managers tracked by advisory and law-firm research. A recent quarterly GP report on Q3 2025 found that the average fee-earning AUM of these firms rose more than 16% year-on-year, with management fees climbing nearly 18% over the same period.Lexology Investor demand for income-oriented private credit, infrastructure and real-asset funds has remained resilient despite a more complicated macro backdrop.

On the private-credit side, Ares and peer HPS Investment Partners top the latest PDI 200 ranking of managers by capital raised, with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and AXA IM Alts rounding out the top five.Private Debt Investor The league table underscores how quickly private credit has professionalized and scaled from a niche lender to a core allocation for pensions, insurers and wealth managers seeking floating-rate, senior-secured exposure.

Ares’ inclusion in the S&P 500 matters for several reasons. First, it automatically channels flows from index and closet-index funds into the stock, potentially broadening its shareholder base and lowering the firm’s cost of equity. Second, it formalizes the idea that alternative managers are now systemically important components of global capital markets—no longer peripheral, but central to how credit, equity and infrastructure risk is intermediated.

For asset allocators, the message is that “owning the owners” of private markets is becoming a more conventional way to access the secular growth of alternatives. Instead of only investing in individual private credit or infrastructure funds, investors can own diversified fee streams across strategies, geographies and vintages via listed managers like Ares. The trade-off remains classic: equity volatility in exchange for embedded growth and operating leverage as AUM compounds.

The backdrop is supportive. With banks constrained by capital requirements and cautious risk appetite, private credit funds have stepped in to finance mid-market buyouts, asset-backed deals and hybrid capital structures. Industry research suggests that private credit has delivered strong risk-adjusted returns in this higher-rate environment, acting as a shock absorber while still providing contractual income.KKR

Ares’ promotion to the S&P 500 crystallizes what many in the industry have been observing for years: private markets are no longer just an “alternative.” They are part of the core financial plumbing—and their leading managers are now core holdings in mainstream equity portfolios as well.