Carlyle doubled its fundraising in the second quarter to more than $12bn as chief executive Harvey Schwartz leads the US private equity giant through a turnaround effort.
The bulk of the fundraising was for the group’s latest Japan buyout fund, as well as its real estate and credit businesses. Carlyle set a goal at the start of the year to raise $40bn in 2024, which it is close to halfway to achieving.
On Monday, Carlyle also announced it was selling one of the largest portfolios of natural gas power plants in the US for $3bn — a fresh sign of a revival in dealmaking.
Schwartz said that the group had made “significant progress” compared to a year ago, as the “environment continues to improve”. Carlyle reached a record $435bn in assets under management and reported $273mn in fee-based earnings, narrowly ahead of analysts’ estimates.
Carlyle’s results come as private capital executives have turned increasingly upbeat about a revival in dealmaking after a two-year long downturn.
However, those deals have not yet returned in full force. The group’s distributable earnings for the quarter — the metric favoured by analysts as a proxy for cash flow — were $343mn, around 11 per cent lower than the same period last year.
Earnings from Ares, Apollo, Blackstone and KKR last week showed that the rival investment firms had deployed more than $160bn between them in the second quarter, as they ramp up activity in preparation for the US Federal Reserve beginning to cut rates.
KKR also reported last week that it had accelerated fundraising in the second quarter, attracting $32.4bn in the three months to the end of June as it seeks to expand its infrastructure, credit and insurance businesses.
But the private capital groups’ comments came ahead of renewed turmoil in global markets on Monday, with sharp falls in European and Asian shares and US futures.
