Monday, March 26, 2012

Carlyle Group: The Greed Side of Sustainability


Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein told WSJ how he preyed for cash.:

If we take a look at a company and say it will take us 10 years or 15 years to improve the environmental sustainability of the company, we're probably not going to make an investment that will take 15 years to be paid back.

But if we can look at something and say, "If we made some improvements in the environmental area or the sustainability area, and if we could make our money back in two or three years," then of course we would do that.

Private-equity firms typically hold things for four to six years, because often our investors want to recycle and get profits back in that period of time.
Sustainability that turns into Carlyle Cash is all that matters.  Rubenstein said it clearly, albeit in a quirky way:

Einstein famously said, "e equals MC squared." In my view what we should say is "S equals MC squared." Sustainability equals more cash flow. And if you are willing to put in the time to improve the sustainability principles of a company, you can in fact make more money..

My guess is Einstein would want no association with private equity, known masters of manipulation.

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

That's our PEU world, full of non-truths.