Carlyle Group will now allow people to invest as little as $50,000 in its new buyout fund, a regulatory filing showed, as private equity firms look to widen their customer base in search of new sources of funding, writes Reuters. The lowered entry point is down from Carlyle’s earlier minimum investment of between $5 million and $20 million, according to a filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January.

This morning find out more about Carlyle’s new buyout fund investment criteria, TPG’s property fund launch and which retailers have the worst customer service.

Private equity owners are preparing to take HD Supply public, nearly six years after buying the industrial distribution company out of Home Depot Inc for $8.5 billion, writes Reuters. Bain Capital, Carlyle Group and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, the buyout firms who jointly led the deal in 2007, plan to interview investment banks next week to select underwriters for the proposed initial public offering (IPO), writes Reuters.

Private equity firm Carlyle Group is preparing to sell aerospace and defense company Arinc and has hired JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners to advise on the process, writes Reuters. Arinc, which the buyout firm bought from six U.S. airlines in 2007 for an undisclosed sum, is expected to draw interest mostly from larger aerospace industry rivals and may fetch $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion in a sale, writes Reuters.

Jacques Chappuis is joining The Carlyle Group as a Managing Director and Head of the Solutions business segment. Chappuis comes to Carlyle from Morgan Stanley, where he serves as President of Alternative Investments Partners. He begins his duties at Carlyle in May and will be based in New York.

Glenn Youngkin, the Carlyle Group’s chief operating officer, talks to David Snow of Privcap about succession at the firm, what exactly he does and why David Rubenstein gives so many speeches.

The Carlyle Group has completed its acquisition of the TCW Group. Financial terms were not announced. TCW management and employees will own about 40% of the company on a fully diluted basis. Carlyle’s investment in TCW comes from the firm’s Global Financial Services Buyouts fund, a $1.1 billion pool, and Carlyle Partners V, a U.S. buyout fund raised $13. 7 billion in 2007.

The Carlyle Group‘s portfolio company Dynamic Precision Group has acquired Paradigm Precision Holdings, a Peabody, Massachusetts based provider of highly engineered components for turbine engines serving the commercial aerospace, defense and energy end markets. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

EIG Global Energy Partners now supports the Carlyle Group‘s pending buy of TCW Group, according to an agreement announced by the firms Wednesday. Terms of the agreement call for EIG to publicly support, and assist TCW in securing investor consent, for the sale. TCW will also maintain its economic interest in existing EIG-managed funds, while EIG will assume full management responsibility for the Funds as general partner and investment manager. EIG last summer sued to stop Carlyle’s buy of TCW Group, claiming that the deal would give Carlyle access to EIG’s information , according to the Wall Street Journal. The TCW-Carlyle trandsaction is on track to close in the near future, the statement says.

The chiefs of the world’s two biggest private equity firms described their asset class as one of the last, best hopes available to score the kinds of returns that pension funds and even individual investors need to catch up following the financial crisis.