The Wall Street Journal-20080117-Carlyle Beefs Up in West For Tech- Health Deals
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Carlyle Beefs Up in West For Tech, Health Deals
Carlyle Group's venture and growth-capital arm is beefing up on the West Coast, hiring two managing directors and a vice president to invest in high-tech and health-care companies.
The moves come a few months after Carlyle's venture group raised a $605 million investment fund to target larger deals of around $20 million to $30 million, versus more-traditional venture investments of around $5 million in smaller companies. The company will aim for less risky, later-stage deals with mature companies already producing revenue, versus start-ups with slim revenue as they try to get off the ground.
Carlyle said it hired Greg Rossmann, 47 years old, previously a managing director at Pequot Capital, a hedge fund that also has a venture-capital and private-equity business. The firm also recruited Nick Sturiale, 43, formerly a partner at Sevin Rosen Funds, as previously reported. The two will be managing directors, seeking out high-tech deals.
Joining as vice president is Rachel L. Winokur, 35, formerly vice president of business development at medical-device company Datascope Corp.
Ms. Winokur and Messrs. Rossmann and Sturiale will work out of Carlyle's offices in San Francisco and a new office opening in the next few months in Menlo Park, Calif. Carlyle said it was moving Ryan A. Harris, a principal with the firm who previously worked in its buyout group, to the West Coast to work on venture and growth health- care deals.
"We think there's a tremendous amount of innovation in medical devices," much of it on the West Coast, said Robert E. Grady, a Carlyle managing director and co-head of the firm's venture arm in San Francisco. "So you've got to be here."
In high-tech, he said: "The thing that we're attacking is this growth capital opportunity -- a little later-stage and little less risky than plain-vanilla, early-stage [venture-capital] investing." Still, Carlyle will seek high-growth companies in the technology, business-services and medical-devices fields, he said.
