The Carlyle Group history

Who can forget KKR’s $31 billion battle over RJR Nabisco in 1988? A few years later, Borden, maker of everything from condensed milk to Elmer’s Glue, was consumed by an ill-fated leveraged buyout.

Carlyle, together with Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, led a $7.5 billion buyout of QwestDex, the third-largest corporate buyout since 1989.

The firm raised its first dedicated buyout fund with $100 million of investor commitments in 1990.

In its early years, Carlyle also advised in transactions including, in 1991, a $500 million investment in Citigroup by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family.

In 1992, Carlyle completed the acquisition of the Electronics division of General Dynamics Corporation, renamed GDE Systems, a producer of military electronics systems.

Carlyle acquired Magnavox Electronic Systems, the military communications and electronic-warfare systems segment of Magnavox, from Philips Electronics in 1993.

Carlyle would sell the business to Tracor in October 1994.

Rosenbaum left in the first year and Norris departed in 1995.

Carlyle's most notable defense industry investment came in October 1997 with its acquisition of United Defense Industries.

Carlyle's 2001 investor conference took place on September 11, 2001.

Lou Gerstner, former chairman and CEO of IBM and Nabisco, replaced Frank Carlucci as chairman of Carlyle in January 2003.

Carlyle also announced the $1.6 billion acquisition of Hawaiian Telcom from Verizon in May 2004.

At the time of its announcement, Freescale would be the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company ever, surpassing the 2005 buyout of SunGard.

In September 2007, Mubadala Development Company, an investment vehicle for the government of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, purchased a 7.5% stake for $1.35 billion.

Gerstner would serve in that position through October 2008.

In 2011, The Carlyle Group- Carlyle Asia Growth Partners IV and Yunfeng Capital acquired an approximately 80% stake in GDC Technology Limited, a digital cinema solutions provider.

In May 2012, Carlyle completed an initial public offering of the company, listing under the symbol CG on the NASDAQ. The firm, which at the time managed about $147 billion of assets, raised $671 million in the offering.

Having purchased Acosta from Thomas H. Lee in 2014 in a $4.4 billion leveraged buyout, Carlyle was merely the last private equity firm at the table when the music stopped.

No surprise that Acosta’s annual revenue has been in near free fall, down by $631 million since 2015, to about $1.6 billion last year.

It didn’t help that 30-year Acosta veteran and CEO, Robert Hill, decided to step down in 2016 and Carlyle, together with Acosta’s board, chose to replace him with two outsiders.

By July 2019 Carlyle, in an effort to reverse the damage it had already done to Acosta’s culture, installed a 28-year Acosta veteran, Darian Pickett, as its third CEO.

Also in June 2020, Unison had been purchased by the Carlyle Group and Unison management strategic investment company.