Carlyle: IPO bound?

Posted Apr 16th 2007 3:10PM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Private Equity

By the end of the year, public investors may have a variety of private equity firms to invest their money in.

The latest? Well, according to a piece in the Washington Post, the Carlyle Group may be prepping an IPO filing.

In fact, the firm's co-founder, David M. Rubenstein, thinks that his firm will be an ideal candidate.

However, he is playing it safe; that is, he wants to see how the Blackstone IPO fares.

Basically, I think this really means he is going to do an IPO. From what I can detect, it looks like there's a tremendous amount of investor interest in the upcoming Blackstone deal.

I recently had lunch with several wealth managers (who work for Blackstone's underwriters) and clients are begging to get a piece of the deal.

I also think a Carlyle deal would be well received. According to Rubenstein, his firm returned a stunning $10.2 billion to its investors in 2006.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Tags: Blackstone, Carlyle, IPOs