Private equity firms to ramp up buys

THREE PE COMPANIES faced the music at the conference, with the theme being whether the firms were buying anything that moved. Or not.

The biggest recent example of PEs putting in their oar into the semiconductor market was a bid for Freescale.

Wolfgang Hanrieder from the Carlyle Group said that two per cent management fees were the industry standard. Dominic Lester at UBS Investment Bank said shareholders in public company had little control of how companies worked.

It transpired that the Carlyle Group has handled an astonishing $44 billion of funds over the last 12 months.

Hanrieder described the movement of PE companies into acquisitions as a tsunami, with the rate accelerating rapidly.

* THE CARLYLE GROUP was part of a consortium which bought VNU, owners of the INQUIRER, earlier this year.