Pete Clare, a three-decade veteran of Carlyle’s group Inc. who has become synonymous with its buyouts business, will leave after passing on a top job at a private equity firm.
Clare — chief investment officer of corporate private equity, chairman of the Americas and a board member — will step down from the Washington-based firm on April 30, after helping with a transition, according to a regulatory filing Monday.
After the sudden departure in August of its former CEO, Kewsong Lee, Carlyle’s board members debated whether to tap an external candidate or hire from within, Bloomberg previously reported. Clare emerged as a candidate for the job, but the directors ultimately decided that Carlyle would benefit from hiring a business operator and outsider with a fresh perspective.
“We wish him and his entire family well in his retirement,” Carlyle Co-Chairmen Bill Conway and David Rubenstein said in a statement.
Clare, 57, left his seat on the board of directors, where his voice carried weight with the company’s three founders, Conway, Rubenstein and Daniel A. D’Aniello. Clare’s departure paves the way for Carlyle’s new CEO, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Co-President Harvey Schwartz, to recreate the company in his own right.
The board expects Schwartz, 58, to focus on financial metrics and begin a budget review as the company continues to push beyond acquisitions for new sources of revenue. The company has struggled to build investor confidence on its growth path, and Carlyle shares have had poor rivals. Apollo Global Management Inc. and KKR & Co. last year.
Clare helped build Carlyle’s Asia buyout business and launched the firm’s first distressed-debt investments before being appointed co-head of the US buyout division in 2011.
The Americas private equity business he oversees has long been a Washington corporate powerhouse, making high-profile bets on government contracting giants such as ManTech and Booz Allen Hamilton. But it also faces an increasingly crowded market as more rivals compete with it for dollars and deals.
In an attempt to boost returns at Carlyle’s private equity arm, Lee is trying to push through changes in how the group is run.
Lee asked the company’s growth and buyout groups to work together more closely and tried to make more organizational changes in the private equity division, people familiar with the matter said. But the unit, in part because of Clare’s grip, sometimes resisted change. Lee’s turnaround bid was cut short when he left Carlyle.
Clare left because fundraising for the company’s first private equity fund was slower than expected. His departure is not a so-called key-man event, a clause that would trigger an automatic suspension of all new deals until some investors weigh in, said a person familiar with the matter. thing.
Sandra Horbach and Brian Bernasek, who lead Carlyle’s US buyout and growth platform together, will also step up as co-leads for the Americas. Horbach founded the firm’s consumer and retail deals practice and is one of the most senior women in the private equity industry. Bernasek heads the company’s industrial group.
–With assistance from Erin Fuchs.
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