Carlyle Names Harvey Schwartz, Former Goldman Sachs Executive, as CEO

“It’s not an easy situation to parachute into,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst at Evercore ISI.

A former chief financial officer of Goldman, Mr. Schwartz was not Carlyle’s first choice. Representatives of the private equity firm had reached out to at least half a dozen high-profile Wall Street executives, including Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman, and Mary Erdoes of JPMorgan Chase, who is seen as a possible successor to Jamie Dimon, that bank’s chief executive, according to people with direct knowledge of those conversations.

It is a painful moment for Carlyle, a storied investment firm founded by Messrs. Conway, Rubenstein and D’Aniello in Washington, D.C. One of its biggest deals, the purchase of the military equipment maker United Defense Industries in 1997, established it as a big player in the defense and aerospace industries. Critics also said Carlyle benefited from its extensive ties with politicians, recruiting former President George H.W. Bush and the former British prime minister John Major as consultants after they left office.

In 2017, Mr. Lee, who had joined Carlyle four years earlier, and Glenn Youngkin, a longtime executive for the firm, were named co-chief executives after Mr. Conway and Mr. Rubenstein said they would step down from their roles as co-chief executives. Beginning in 2018, the two co-founders became co-executive chairmen, and Mr. D’Aniello, Carlyle’s chairman at the time, became chairman emeritus.

In September 2020, Mr. Youngkin stepped down to run for governor of Virginia, leaving Mr. Lee as sole chief executive. But after barely two years in the role, he abruptly left Carlyle. When the firm announced his departure — on a Sunday night — it said there was no successor in place.

In an interview with The New York Times the next month, Mr. Rubenstein said he had been frustrated by Mr. Lee’s lack of interest in his advice. “He would spend a lot of time talking to somebody that would own 1 percent of the company or 2 percent of the company or 3 percent,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “But we owned 35 percent,” he added, referring to his fellow founders.

Then began the search for a new chief executive.

In addition to Ms. Erdoes and Mr. Cohn, Carlyle approached a number of high-profile Wall Street executives: John Waldron, a potential successor to Goldman’s chief executive, David Solomon; Nasdaq’s chief executive, Adena Friedman; Alison Mass, who leads Goldman’s investment banking division; Greg Fleming, a former Morgan Stanley executive; David McCormick, who once ran Bridgewater Associates and lost a Senate primary race last year; Ralph Schlosstein, a co-founder of BlackRock; and the former JPMorgan operating chief Matthew Zames, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks. Some of them declined to be interviewed for the job.

Carlyle representatives also sounded out some of the candidates about whether they could sell the firm if they took the job, two of the people said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/business/carlyle-ceo-schwartz.html