Reply #62: Government insiders who cashed in their positions by selling out their country.

[Octafish]

In the process, they've killed millions and penured the planet.

Hell might be an upgrade from the places they are headed.

Might the Tory you are thinking of be the lowlife John Major, KCabotDullesMarxIII?

Carlyle Changes Its Stripes

By diversifying into a broad range of assets and deals, it aims to flourish long after the buyout boom fizzles

Feb, 12, 2007
Business Week

In the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they've been called a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only one firm has been tagged in the popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government conspiracies. The broadsides got to be more than David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway Jr., and Daniel A. D'Aniello, founders of Washington's Carlyle Group, could take. "It was nauseating," Rubenstein says.

Carlyle, founded 20 years ago in the shadow of Washington's power centers, long went about its business far from the public eye. Its ranks were larded with the politically connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime Minister John Major. It used its partners' collective relationships to build a lucrative business buying, transforming, and selling companies--particularly defense companies that did business with governments.

Carlyle might have continued happily in that niche except for the confluence of three events. First there were the terrorist attacks of September 11. In the aftermath, conspiracy theorists seized on Carlyle's huge profits, intense secrecy, and close dealings with wealthy Saudi investors. The scrutiny reached a crescendo in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which made Carlyle seem like the sort of company image-conscious investors like public pension funds might choose to avoid. The second factor was the tsunami of capital that has been sloshing around the globe for five years, providing almost limitless funding for the kind of dealmaking that is Carlyle's specialty. All that liquidity has brought with it immense opportunity as well as stiff new competition. Finally, there's the succession issue. Carlyle's baby boomer founders can see retirement around the corner. And they badly want the firm, their legacy, to outlast them.

At this make-or-break juncture, Carlyle's founders, billionaires all, decided to refashion their firm radically--to transform it into something more ambitious, more diverse, and more lasting.

Stage I of what some have dubbed the Great Experiment was largely cosmetic. The founders asked members of the bin Laden family to take back their money. They sat down with George H.W. Bush and John Major and discussed, improbable though it might seem, how the two were no longer wanted as senior advisers because they hurt the firm's image. Out went former Reagan Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci as chairman. In came highly regarded former chairman and CEO of IBM (IBM ), Louis V. Gerstner Jr., along with former Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, former General Electric (GE ) Vice-Chairman David Calhoun, and former Time Inc. (TWX ) Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, among others, to underscore Carlyle's commitment to portfolio diversification and upright corporate citizenship. Carlyle also pared back its defense holdings dramatically.

Stage II went much further and, indeed, might come to redefine the very nature of private equity. While other major buyout firms raise a few massive funds that hunt big prey--companies they can take private, rejigger financially, and, eventually, sell off or take public again--Carlyle has spread its money among no fewer than 48 funds around the world. Whereas the other giant firms--Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Texas Pacific Group--manage just 14, 7, and 6 funds, respectively, according to Thomson Financial, Carlyle launched a mind-boggling 11 in 2005 and 11 more in 2006.

CONTINUED...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_07/b4021001.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

Carlyle's Founders: William E. Conway, Jr., Daniel A. D'Aniello, Stephen L. Norris, Greg A. Rosenbaum, and David M. Rubenstein. Norris and Rosenbaum left the firm years ago.

Really appreciate your giving a damn and friendship, KCDM3. Thanks to you bringing up Major, I found the latest on Carlyle Group's successes in Bidness Weak. Just you're name knocks the BFEE on its ass.