Carlyle Group: A bunch of Sleazy Corporatist Fucks. That includes Bill Clinton

If it seems like Carlyle is doing a new deal every other day, that's not far off the mark. Last month, Carlyle and two private-equity partners bought Home Depot's supply arm for $10.3 billion. That was followed a week later by the purchase of Allison Transmission from General Motors for $5.6 billion. The day after that, Carlyle bought a building in Trieste, Italy.

On July 2, Carlyle disclosed that it was taking nursing-home chain Manor Care private for $6.3 billion. On July 5, it agreed to buy Annapolis-based ARINC, a communications company serving the military and the passenger airline industry. The next day, Carlyle announced its first real estate investment in Finland.

Where does Carlyle get all that money?

"It's called 300 days a year on a plane with 18 full-time fundraisers," said Daniel A. D'Aniello, a Carlyle managing director and one of the firm's three co-founders.

Led by David Rubenstein, another managing director and co-founder, Carlyle has an investor relations team traveling the world, pitching the company to public and private pension funds, universities, endowments and wealthy individuals.

The company has roughly $58.5 billion under management, and it anticipates the total will grow to $88 billion by the end of the year. "Under management" refers to the amount that investors, have given -- or contracted to give -- a firm to invest.

"The money comes from corporate and public pension funds, which means teachers, firemen, union members," D'Aniello said in a telephone interview yesterday.