We’ve had the heady heights of the Fortress offering - and Blackstone is set to follow suit. Now the co-founder of Carlyle is the latest to make noises about the appeal of the public markets.
David Rubenstein has told the Washington Post that Carlyle is in “a monitoring mode” and is going to closely watch how Blackstone fares. “It’s fair to say that Carlyle . . . would be thought to be a natural candidate to go public,” Rubenstein said. “We don’t have our heads in the sand and we’re not ignoring what’s going on with Blackstone or Fortress [Investment Group] or others,” he said. “Today we are not working on an IPO. But . . . if our competitors all go public and all of them seem to be stronger than they were before, obviously we would have to take a look at the situation.”
Roger Ehrenberg at Information Arbitrage points out that he last summer mused that Carlyle seemed to be taking action to prepare itself to go public - such as starting a hedge fund arm to add to its private equity business. With a $1bn multistrategy hedge fund reportedly ready to launch next month, the first product of the Carlyle Blue Wave hedge fund unit, talk of an IPO is heating up.
But, in the Post story, one telling remark is Rubenstein’s overall take on the industry’s fad for listing. “These guys who built these private-equity firms: You can say many things about them, but one thing you can’t say it they’re stupid, or they are not an alpha male,” says Rubenstein. “These guys are going to be fairly forthright about getting what they think they earned for building these firms.”
Which begs the question: if they’re selling, are you a buyer?
