Carlyle creates public markets IR role

The Carlyle Group has hired former Goldman Sachs analyst Daniel Harris to handle communicating the firm’s financial information to public shareholders and analysts.

With its initial public offering, newly minted public company The Carlyle Group now has another group of shareholders to answer to. 

To handle that responsibility, the firm has hired former Goldman Sachs senior research analyst Daniel Harris to handle its public market investor relations, a newly created position. 

Harris, who joined the firm prior to its IPO, is tasked with engaging analysts who cover Carlyle and will play an important role in delivering the firm’s quarterly earnings reports, according to a market source.

Prior to joining Carlyle, Harris covered 20 public companies through his position as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Those companies included exchanges, discount brokers and investment banks, according to a statement. 

Harris had previously worked as an equity research analyst at JP Morgan Securities, a senior manager at Morgan Stanley Capital International’s financial strategy and analysis group and a strategic consulting associate at Oliver Wyman/Mercer Management Consulting. 

Carlyle’s IPO priced at $22 per share on 3 May, below the $23 to $25 price range set in its prospectus. The pricing valued the firm at $6.7 billion, well below expectations, continuing the trend of publicly traded private equity firms’ share prices floundering after the float. In 2007, an investment from the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth group valued Carlyle at $18 billion. 

The firm raised $671 million through the IPO. Proceeds will be used for debt repayment, growth initiatives, acquisitions and strategic investments and to fund capital commitments to its funds. As of press time, Carlyle was trading at $22.01 per share. 

Public markets also responded tepidly to private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management’s IPO earlier this year. The firm failed to sell all of the 11.3 million shares it had expected to move in the offering. Oaktree had priced at the bottom of its price range at $43 per share, raising $387 million. The firm was trading at $41.45 at press time.Â