Carlyle to expand $13bn credit programme

The Carlyle Group is expanding its $13 billion credit strategies programme and as a first step, is centralising the various debt teams with a newly created leadership role to oversee the programme.

Carlyle has hired Michael Petrick, a Morgan Stanley veteran, to run the team, which encompasses credit, mezzanine and distressed debt. Petrick’s title is global head of credit alternatives and capital markets.

Michael Petrick

Petrick joins Carlyle after a more than 20-year career at Morgan Stanley, where he led institutional sales and trading. Petrick has also headed up corporate credit, non-investment grade, distressed investing and leveraged finance restructuring at Morgan Stanley.

Carlyle has 24 credit-related funds with $13 billion of assets managed by 57 people, the firm said.

“The goal is to bring greater scale to the business,” Carlyle spokesperson Chris Ullman told PEO in an interview. “Carlyle has been involved in credit products for many years and … thinks it can do even better.”

The growth of the strategy could include introducing new types of credit investing, Ullman said.

Carlyle has a European leveraged finance team with about €5.4 billion of assets under management across 22 funds; a US leverage finance team with 11 funds and $4.3 billion of AUM, and a mezzanine team with $990 million of assets in two funds. Carlyle Strategic Partners Funds I and II are the firm’s distressed and corporate opportunities funds.