China remains attractive market for PE investment: Carlyle Group

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- China remains an attractive market for private equity (PE) investment as the country's economic transition offers emerging opportunities, senior management of U.S. PE giant the Carlyle Group told Xinhua recently.

China is the largest economy in the world as measured by Purchase Power Parity, with huge market potential in consumers, according to David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and co-executive chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest PE firms.

The Carlyle Group has been active in China for 20 years, and is by far the largest global PE investor in the country, with investment of over 7.5 billion U.S. dollars of equity in China in more than 90 transactions, according to David M. Marchick, the group's managing director and global head of external affairs.

Rubenstein observed that China has a very entrepreneurial culture as UN statistics showed one out of every 10 Chinese adults is an entrepreneur, which lends itself to finding very talented people who want to work hard, build companies, and who can use capital to invest, he said

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been very welcoming of PE and has made it easier for PE investment than it might be in other large emerging markets, Rubenstein added.

"Those are the principal reasons why I think China is a very attractive place to invest, and will continue to be the most attractive market to invest in the world outside of the United States," he said.

For global firms to succeed in investing in PE in China, Rubenstein suggested taking a local approach such as employing Chinese and adapting to Chinese culture.

Over the past years, the Carlyle Group has invested anywhere between 500 million and 1 billion U.S. dollars annually in China and expects this to continue if not increase, Marchick said.

Driven by the fundamentals of the Chinese economy, the group is currently particularly focused on a few sectors including consumer and retail, healthcare, education and financial services.

"We are raising our next Asia fund, which will be our largest. That will allow us to increase our investment pace even more in China," Marchick said. Enditem