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The Carlyle group
is active in the private equity market once
again. Its second pan-Asian fund, the $170-million
Carlyle Asia Venture Partners (CAVP) II,
has done two deals this year, Worldzen Holdings
and QuEST. Tony Jansz, managing director,
Carlyle Asia Investment Advisors, talks
to Snigdha Sengupta about the group's strategy
- How is the
current strategy different from the one
two years ago?
Those companies... had a very domestic
context. Now... we can introduce managements
to the borderless approach that forms
the core of our strategy. For instance,
we have invested in an organic light-emitting
diode technology developer in Korea, Ness
Display, that mass-produces in Singapore,
assembles in China and Taiwan, and sells
to the US.
- When will
that happen here?
It's already started. QuEST does high-end
computer-aided design and engineering
work for aeronautical, automotive, power
generation and ene- rgy companies. Carlyle
has investments worldwide in all these
sectors. This company is currently conducting
due diligence on potential partners for
manufacturing in China. So it would do
design in India, back-end manufacturing
in China, and delivery in Europe and the
US. All our future investments here would
follow the same model. We will make two
more investments in India before the close
of this fiscal. In each, we would make
an initial investment of between $3 million
and $10 million.
- How is the
Asia-Pacific market split?
We're very focussed on... China, Taiwan,
India and Japan. We have identified North
Asia for next generation wireless devices.
In South Asia, chiefly India, it would
be outsourced services. China and India
are our most important markets and have
an allocation of 30% and 35%, respectively,
out of our overall Asia corpus.
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