The Carlyle Group (The Bush Economic Mafia) creates group to invest in Central, Eastern Europe
D.C.-based Carlyle, a private-equity giant with more than $71 billion under management, said the new team will be headed by Ryszard Wojtkowski, who begins his duties immediately as a managing director based in Warsaw, Poland. Carlyle's new team for Central and Eastern Europe will make growth capital and buyout investments in companies across sectors such as consumer, retail, industrial, information technology, media, health care and financial services. The scope of Carlyle's investment capabilities will extend to Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and the Baltic states.
"We see long-term opportunity in Central and Eastern Europe," said Daniel D'Aniello, a Carlyle co-founder and managing director, in a company statement.
It is hard to imagine an address closer to the heart of American power. The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very center of the Washington establishment, but amid the frenetic politicking that has occupied the higher reaches of that world in recent weeks, few have paid it much attention. Elsewhere, few have even heard of it. This is exactly the way Carlyle likes it. For 14 years now, with almost no publicity, the company has been signing up an impressive list of former politicians - including the first President Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker; John Major; one-time World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi and several south-east Asian power brokers - and using their contacts and influence to promote the group. Among the companies Carlyle owns are those which make equipment, vehicles and munitions for the US military, and its celebrity employees have long served an ingenious dual purpose, helping encourage investments from the very wealthy while also smoothing the path for Carlyle's defense firms. But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $13.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden.
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