Bloomberg Article Reports Youngkin “flamed out” of Carlyle Group, “Racked Up Bad Bets,” Had “checkered record and “little choice but to leave”

Another day, another article that is FAR from flattering of Glenn Trumpkin…er, Youngkin. In this case, it’s a story by Bloomberg which basically finds that at the Carlyle Group, Youngkin “shepherded several bets and strategies that chalked up losses, and some of them are still being unwound”; “flamed out”; “retied after a power struggle that left him in charge of more modest businesses”; had “a checkered record at odds with his campaign’s portrayal”; and “confided in colleagues that he felt he had little choice but to leave.” Great, eh? Oh, and far from what Youngkin claimed, clearly he didn’t choose to leave Carlyle to pursue some sort of higher calling in politics, but because he was basically told to hit the road…

• “…people close to the private-equity firm have been chafing over the picture Youngkin paints of his investing acumen and the circumstances of his departure. In his final decade there, he shepherded several bets and strategies that chalked up losses, and some of them are still being unwound.”
• “After Carlyle’s founders gave him a shot at co-running the firm in 2018, he flamed out. In an industry where leadership teams work together for decades, his co-CEO quickly established dominance, diminishing Youngkin’s clout.”
• “…at Carlyle the circumstances of his exit aren’t really a secret: He retired after a power struggle that left him in charge of more modest businesses. Current and former employees, asking not to be identified discussing internal business, describe a checkered record at odds with his campaign’s portrayal.”
• “Youngkin also oversaw Carlyle’s roughly half-billion-dollar stake in NGP Energy Capital, a Texas-based investment firm…Carlyle spent $61 million to exercise that option for NGP’s 10th fund in 2014, a move that quickly proved costly. By the end of that year, the bet on NGP’s prowess had taken a $39 million bite out of Carlyle’s fee income — enough that executives had to forfeit compensation they were previously awarded. That rankled the firm’s insiders. Things didn’t improve. NGP’s assets declined by more than $2 billion. By the end of last year, Carlyle had yet to reap carried interest from the NGP funds. NGP’s first nine funds, before Carlyle invested, had all generated those fees.”
• “The infrastructure push haunted Youngkin. The fund that Carlyle raised in 2018 struggled to move large deals forward, such as the redevelopment of Terminal One at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. According to Carlyle, the fund had invested just $466 million as of last December, when a new head was brought in. One customer, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, said it was told the fund had a negative return of 51% at the end of 2020. That year, Youngkin confided in colleagues that he felt he had little choice but to leave as co-CEO Lee continued to strengthen his grip. When announcing his departure, he told employees that he wasn’t sure what he would do next.”