have seen it pick up and I think this year, you’ll see much more money deployed than you did see last year in the buyout world.”
On how much more Carlyle Group LP (NASDAQ:CG) plans to do:
“I cannot say exactly what we’re going to do. As a publicly traded company, I go to jail every time I say something to specific, so I’m going to be very careful. I would say simply that we have projected and we have said to people that we expect, but cannot guarantee, that we will probably invest more this year than we did last year.”
On why megadeals have not worked historically for private equity:
“If you take the largest deals that have ever been done, they have not yielded great rates of return. If someone were to look at the history as a predictor of the future, you would say, name the five biggest buyout deals that have been done. Did they yield heroic rates of return? Probably not. As a result, people would say that it is easier to get good rates of return with deals that consume less equity and therefore it’s easier to return that equity. Law of size has some advantages to it when you are doing some types of deals. You can get better deals. You can buy more mature management teams when you’re dealing with companies that are maybe $1 billion to $5 billion in purchase price. When you are buying a company that has a $20 billion or $40 billion market cap, it may be very difficult to get the rates of return that you want.”
On whether there is a deal size that is a bridge too far:
“I would not say a bridge too far. I would say, in our case, we tend focus on deals that are in our sweet spot. That is probably deals that consume equity of maybe $350 million up to $1 billion and the total purchase price might be below $5 billion in size. We like deals in the $1-2-3 billion purchase price range. That is what we are comfortable with and what we have done for 25 years. We’re not somebody that has gone to see the mega deals and that it hasn’t been our sweet spot. It has been good for other people, but not something we have pursued.”
On compensation:
“We have about 110-115 partners in our firm. I take virtually no salary, for example. I have a modest salary. I took no bonus last year. The other co-founders took no bonus. I make virtually all my money on the dividends of my stock and my personal investments. I am not compensated very high compared to many people in our firm.”
On owning the majority of Carlyle Group LP (NASDAQ:CG) stock:
“That is an owner. That is different than compensation and high salary…it is not as high as some people thought it would be. Right before we went public, some people thought we owned more.”
On whether his ownership stake will change over the next few years:
“Nothing is forever. I’m 63 years old. I have decided to follow the Pope’s lead and to retire when I’m 85, so I have 22 years to go. Gradually over those 22, years I suspect my stake will go down. Maybe I will sell some stock. I do not have any plans to sell stock at the moment. But at some point, I might sell stock. Gradually, more and more people will get in and get new stock. That is the way the world works. There will be an evolutionary change at some point. But for the foreseeable future, we don’t expect to see any major changes and I do not expect to be selling my own stock.”
