Carlyle’s Rubenstein: PE Deserves a Better Defense

Private equity deserves a better defense from U.S. public officials, says David Rubenstein, the Carlyle Group’s co-CEO and cofounder.

Rubenstein, who was speaking Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, didn’t call on Mitt Romney to do a better job standing up for PE, the network reported. Romney, who founded Bain Capital in the 1980s, is running for president. He has been defending his ties to PE and the role private equity plays in job creation, CNBC says.

Rubenstein says the world of high finance “deserves better defense than what we’re getting,” the story says. Some of that involves telling the public how PE helps companies become more efficient, helps maintain jobs and gets good rates of return for investors, the story says.

This isn’t the first time PE execs have complained about the lame defense private equity is getting. In February, William Barnum, a Brentwood Associates partner, told peHUB that private equity isn’t organized enough to fight the glut of bad press. He compared PE to venture capital, which is much more “together.”

“Private equity hasn’t done a good job representing itself,” Barnum said. “It isn’t as united in the ‘one for all and all for one’ way that some industries are.”

Photo provided courtesy of REUTERS/Fred Prouser