Carlyle Group has today announced the US private equity firm's biggest shakeup since it was founded 30 years ago.
The company said today Glenn Youngkin and Kewsong Lee would become its new co-chief executives, replacing its top management team of David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D'Aniello.
In Ireland, the Carlyle Group operates the Carlyle Cardinal Ireland Fund (CCI) - a joint-venture between Carlyle and Cardinal Capital Group.
Its investments here include Lily O'Briens, Carroll Cuisine, Payzone and AA Ireland.
The move makes Carlyle the latest buyout firm to take steps toward a generational change, after peer KKR & Co said in July it would promote Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall to co-presidents and co-chief operating officers, setting them up as successors to its founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts.
Unlike KKR, however, Carlyle is giving Youngkin and Lee, both aged 51, its top jobs.
This makes it the first among the private equity industry's publicly traded pioneers, that also include Blackstone Group and Apollo Global Management, to hand over the reins.
Rubenstein and Conway, both 68, will give up their roles as Carlyle co-CEOs to become co-executive chairmen of the Washington, D.C.-based firm's board.
D'Aniello, 71, will transition from chairman to chairman emeritus, Carlyle said in a statement. The changes will become effective in January.
Youngkin is currently Carlyle's president and chief operating officer. A 23-year veteran of the firm, he is credited with building many of Carlyle's businesses, including its energy investing practice and its fund-of-funds division.
Lee, currently Carlyle's deputy chief investment officer for private equity and head of its global market strategies segment, joined Carlyle just four years ago from Warburg Pincus, another private equity firm.
There he led investments in the consumer, industrial and services sectors.
Lee beat other Carlyle insiders for the top job thanks to his reputation as a problem solver, having helped rebuilt Carlyle's credit investing business after several missteps.
The transition takes place after Carlyle reshaped its portfolio to exit from unprofitable businesses, such as hedge funds.
Its shares are now hovering around a two-year high thanks to the strong performance of its private equity funds, which have been buoyed by a stock market rally and are returning on average 2.2 times its investors' money.
Carlyle, whose investments over the years have included car rental company Hertz Global Holdings, photo agency Getty Images and consumer headphones maker Beats Electronics, is a much more diverse and global investment firm since its launch in 1987.
Rubenstein, Conway and D'Aniello, worth about $2.9 billion each according to Forbes, have built it into a manager of more than $170 billion of assets across almost 300 funds and investment vehicles, spanning private equity, credit investments and real estate.
It employs more than 1,550 people in 31 offices across six continents.
Blackstone, Carlyle's biggest rival, has not yet formally named a successor to its CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, 70, though the head of its real estate business Jonathan Gray, 47, is widely recognised as his heir apparent.
Apollo faces a less pressing succession issue given that 66-year-old CEO Leon Black's co-founding partners, Marc Rowan and Joshua Harris, are 55 and 52, respectively.
