"I'd say that private equity firms have been behind investment banks and law firms (in such hiring)," David Rubenstein, co-founder of Carlyle told Reuters.

"The industry... probably has fewer women partners and probably fewer minority partners than we probably should have."

D.C.-based Carlyle is now looking to encourage women and minorities to break the glass ceiling to gain high positions in the firm. Carlyle, together with non-profit organization The Robert Toigo Foundation, said on Thursday they're setting up a MBA fellowship which will include time spent working at Carlyle, its portfolio companies and with some of the firms' investors.

Rubenstein said that hopefully, some will afterward want to work permanently at Carlyle or other private equity firms.

"We hope this will lead to our recruiting  some very talented minority MBAs," he said. "In our particular case, we do have the most senior women in the buyout world who are partners here, and we have a number of senior minority black partners, but we could do better," he said.

Carlyle said it has pledged $1 million over four years to support the effort. 

The firms are inviting second-year minority MBA students to apply at www.toigofoundation.org and said in a press release they're expecting strong competition.

"The foundation we're affiliating with has a 30 year history of identifying very talented MBA students and finding jobs for them on Wall Street," he said. "Well, we want to make sure they come to private equity firms, not just other kinds of Wall Street firms.

Still, large numbers of banks were involved in each deal and both involved a significant amount of the private equity firms' own equity.

"It suggests there's a little bit of thawing," said Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago. "It suggests there will be a normal world at some point and they are both the kind of deals you'd expect to see in this environment -- you don't expect public-to-publics in this market."

Blackstone's acquisition of AB InBev's theme parks involves up to $1 billion of equity in the deal, which is around 40 percent of the overall price. The rest is coming from senior secured debt, mezzanine financing and an undrawn revolver. Senior credit facilities are being provided by a line of banks -- BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs Loan Partners and Mizuho Corporate Bank.

Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc's $477 million deal to take a stake in cleaning company JohnsonDiversey and undertake a $2.6 billion recapitalization was backed by an even longer list of banks: eleven in total are willing to participate in the financing, CD&R said.

The large number of banks involved "indicates that the lending market is still not robust so you need a bunch of lenders to get one of this size," said Kaplan. Lenders will prefer to be diversified, he added.

Equity levels in deals are also higher than during the boom years. The equity check put in by Blackstone for the theme park deal is higher than what firms might have put in during 2005-07. During those frothy years, a more usual number was around 30 percent, whereas this year, some deals by private equity firms have even involved 100 percent equity.

"Equity percentages when the debt market is strong tend to be in the 30 percent range -- or 25 percent if it is really high -- and when the bank markets are off, which they are now... you're at 35 or 40 percent, which is where you are today," said Kaplan.

Still, there's a long way to go between here and the late 1980s buyout wave.

"The big difference between the late '80s and the recent wave is that (then), the median deal was 90 percent debt and 10 percent equity -- it was insane," said Kaplan. "The deals done in this last wave were much safer."

"After World War II we were 48 percent of the world's GDP; now we are about 20 percent of the world's GDP... We have to get used to the fact that the dollar is relatively cheap and ... that the dollar is probably not going to be the reserve currency that it's been for so many years."

Rubenstein said the center of the financial world won't just be New York, but spread between here, London, Shanghai, Dubai, Sao Paulo and a few other cities.

Rubenstein concentrated particularly on the U.S. economy's problems, listing issues such as the deficit, inflation, taxes and employment. He said that the U.S. is about two years into the recession and probably has a "month or two to go."

He listed the areas he thinks are attractive investment opportunities: distressed investing, companies getting support from the U.S. government, energy (both carbon and alternative),  healthcare and emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil.

Among the final tidbits of advice that the private equity chief shot at the audience was to avoid excessive leverage:

"What we learned out of this most recent recession is if you borrow a lot of money it comes home to roost, so I'd avoid leverage--even normal leverage can be very dangerous at times when the economy goes down."

"They've got a tremendous pool of assets to deploy and the opportunities couldn't be greater," Wien said, in a phone chat with Reuters a day after his appointment.

"One of the reasons that I took this job is that I saw so much opportunity in all the areas they're operating," said Wien, who at 76 has had a long career analyzing markets at some of Wall Street's most powerful firms.

Wien will be reporting to Blackstone's CEO Steve Schwarzman and COO Tony James, rather than any particular area or fund.

"I'm going to be trying to determine how social, political and economic factors influence the financial markets and I expect that my commentary will be used across all the areas of the firm -- asset management, real estate, private equity and also the advisory business," Wien said.

Among his predictions::

He doesn't think commercial real estate has bottomed yet, but thinks housing is in the process of bottoming. 

He's bullish about the economy -- his view is the United States is on its way out of recession and that it will have a positive quarter before the end of the year.

"My view is that the economy has probably turned, and I think there will be a few quarters coming up that will surprise favourably because the comparisons will be easy and there will be some inventory rebuilding."

That could be positive for distressed investments, he said.  "My view is that as a result some current distressed is going to perform pretty well," he said.

But he also sounded a note of caution, saying he's concerned about what will happen in 2010 when the stimulus wears off.

He's still bullish on credit: "I have been very bullish on the whole credit area all year... I don't think that's over yet," he said.

He thinks banks will only really start lending again when they get toxic assets off their balance sheets -- although he couldn't exactly predict when. "I hope that will be resolved over the next few months but I would have said that 3 months ago," he added. A revitalization in the lending markets is key for private equity firms like Blackstone to be able to ink leveraged buyout deals of any significant size. 

Still, he thinks there are good opportunities for Blackstone's private equity funds. "There are a lot of companies available at attractive prices," he said.

Wien, who found his new job only a few months after his previous employer, hedge fund firm Pequot Capital Management, went out of business, is partly famous for his annual forecast of ten surprises for the year.  He's planning on continuing that. "It isn't broken and I dont want to fix it," he quipped. He starts at Blackstone in September.

The idea all along has been for KKR, after listing on Euronext through buying its Amsterdam-listed fund KPE, to potentially list on the NYSE, so switching to Nasdaq would be quite a suprise.

Press releases up to now have pinpointed the NYSE as KKR's possible future home. However, today's document is a filing to unitholders rather than a statement to the press, so it is more formal and looks at all possible eventualities (such as a long section on risk factors).

[extract] Following the consummation of the Combination Transaction, KPE and KKR will have the right to require that the other use its reasonable best efforts to cause interests in the Combined Business to be listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange or The NASDAQ Stock Market at a future date. If such listing occurs, KPE would make an in-kind distribution of such interests to KPE unitholders, subject to applicable laws, rules and regulations, KPE units would cease to trade on Euronext Amsterdam and KPE would subsequently be dissolved and delisted from Euronext Amsterdam.

The NYSE and Nasdaq have been arch rivals for years and compete tooth and nail for listings. We're betting this one won't really be up for grabs though, and that KKR will settle next to rival Blackstone on the Big Board.

However, KKR still has a sizeable chunk of its existing funds to spend (known as dry powder) -- it finished raising a $17.6 billion to spend on buyouts in 2008.

Fundraising is a tough place to be right now. Blackstone is continuing to chip away raising for BCP VI, its sixth buyout fund, which according to Preqin has a $15 billion target.

Other research Preqin has done shows the average time taken to close a fund is 18.3 months. That's not surprising, as LPs (the investors in private equity funds) are far more concerned that private equity funds don't make capital calls on existing funds.

But some are managing to raise even first funds  -- Huntsman Gay finished raising its first fund, totaling $1.1 billion this week.

Sitting on about £700m worth of profits from its eight month-long investment in UK bank Barclays, the Qatari foray into European M&A is looking a lot more successful today than it was this time last year.

The Qatari investment in Barclays was jointly made by the Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and Challenger, a vehicle owned by the Emirate’s royal family. 

It was QIA that was looking somewhat out of its depth 12 months ago. Having shelved a takeover bid for supermarket giant J Sainsbury at the last minute in late 2007, in July last year it emerged that Four Seasons, the UK nursing homes operator QIA bought through the Three Delta fund in 2006, was in trouble.

The high-profile collapse of the bid for J Sainsbury led to questions about QIA’s deal-making experience and this was only compounded by the failure of the highly leveraged buyout of Four Seasons, which subsequently saw QIA’s £110m equity investment wiped out.

But a bit further along the road and QIA is sitting pretty on private equity-like returns from its bet on Barclays.

It seems that the sovereign fund is moving away from its attempts to control companies and is focusing instead on buying stakes in stalwarts of the European corporate world.

As well as its stake in Credit Suisse, hiked to 8.9% after the Swiss bank’s capital raising in October 2008, QIA is currently in exclusive talks with Porsche that could lead to an investment in the sports-car maker and possibly the acquisition of the derivatives package controlling VW shares.

Two years ago when companies such as Four Seasons and J Sainsbury were in play, QIA had to compete hard to put its money to work. It made some mistakes trying to find its feet.

In the post-credit crunch world, QIA’s liquidity is regarded as a valuable commodity and as such the investment landscape is infinitely more amenable to a sovereign wealth fund looking for opportunities. It can make choices rather than trying to win auctions.

An investment in Porsche in its hour of need could prove to be just as successful for QIA as the Barclays deal. 

Among the spurt of pre-Independence Day activity was Exelon bumping its bid for rival NRG and Johnson & Johnson buying a stake in Elan. Last night, Flagstone Reinsurance made a competing bid for rival IPC.

It doesn't yet compare, however, to July 3rd 2007 when KKR announced plans to IPO, HIlton went private and Apollo made a $6 billion approach to chemicals firm Huntsman.

Other deals announced today:

    ** International Assets Holding Corp agreed to buy commodity risk management firm FCStone Group Inc in an all-stock deal valued at about $130 million, as it looks to expand its presence in the commodities market. 

    ** GlaxoSmithKline expanded its emerging markets footprint by buying Bristol-Myers Squibb's branded generics drugs business in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Yemen for $23.2 million. 

     ** Lufthansa could still win quick European Union regulatory approval for its planned takeover of Austrian Airlines if it makes concessions within days, the European Commission said. 
 
    ** Opel frontrunner Magna's consortium partner Sberbank said the race to acquire the carmaker was all but over, though Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co (BAIC) may still lodge a bid in the coming days.  
 
    ** Onex Corp said it acquired a majority stake in the Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel and Casino after the property emerged from bankruptcy protection. 
 
    ** China National Petroleum Corp, the country's largest oil company, plans to revive a $17 billion bid for the Argentinian unit of Spanish oil major Repsol-YPF, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, citing sources.  
 
    ** Rio Tinto Ltd sold virtually all of the UK part of its $15.2 billion rights offer, the world's fifth-biggest, easing its huge debt burden and putting the world's top iron ore miner back in growth mode.  
 
    ** Swedish Match said it had agreed to sell its South African operations to Philip Morris International for 1.75 billion rand ($224.7 million). 

    ** Spanish holding company Alba has bought a 10 percent stake in technology firm Indra from utility Union Fenosa at 15 euros per share, Alba and Fenosa said.

    ** Icelandic investment firm Novator sold its 20.11 percent stake in sporting goods firm Amer Sports to institutional investors at roughly a 15 percent discount to Wednesday's closing price. 

    ** The head of Russia's Sberbank said he sees no serious competition in its takeover of German carmaker Opel, which it has agreed to buy in partnership with Canadian auto parts group Magna.

Deals announced on Wednesday include:

Britain's International Power said on Wednesday it would sell its Czech business to the Czecho-Slovak investment firm J&T Group for 581 million pounds ($963 million), net of expenses, boosting its shares. 

 CEZ has agreed to purchase a 49 percent stake in heating plant Prazska Plynarenska from Czech-Slovak private equity firm J&T, the Czech power group said.

Asia-focused Standard Chartered is in talks to purchase banking assets in China and India owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. 

Japan's Shinsei Bank plans to buy rival Aozora Bank in a deal that brings together two loss-making lenders in hopes of building a stronger bank that can return to growth in both retail and corporate banking.

 World No. 2 brewer SABMiller will sell 10 percent of its South African unit to black investors in a deal worth $750 million to meet the country's affirmative action rules, it said on Wednesday.  

 Saudi-based dairy firm Almarai Co said on Wednesday it has reached an agreement to buy all shares in Hail Agricultural Development Co (Hadco) widening its scope to the poultry business.

The bidding war for U.S.-based Borland Software Corp heated up on Wednesday as British software firm Micro Focus International Plc sweetened its cash offer to $1.50 per share from $1.15 per share, topping a proposal made by an unnamed bidder last week.

Overnight, Carlyle announced it raised $1.04 billion for its fourth Asian growth capital fund -- nearly double the size of its previous such fund.

The fund has already made investments into companies including the high-end Chinese women's apparel maker Ellassay. Fundraising is exceptionally tough right now for private equity firms. Carlyle said nearly 40 percent of the fund's investors are new and that it raised the fund in 14 months, reflecting improved investor sentiment towards China and India.

Blackstone, increasingly aggressive in Asia, on Monday hired an executive from Deutsche Asset Management to lead its capital raising efforts across the Asia-Pacific region. The firm has also been talking to the Shanghai city government to set up a wholly owned China subsidiary as it prepares to launch a local currency private equity fund, sources previously told Reuters.

Deals of the day: 

* Japan's Shinsei Bank and Aozora Bank, two loss-making lenders backed by U.S. investors, are likely to announce plans on Wednesday to merge by next year, two sources familiar with the matter said.  
 
* Shareholders in Australian investment firm Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group voted in favour of a $1.3 billion takeover offer from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). 

* Belgium-based RHJ International is close to a deal to buy a stake in Opel after talks between parent General Motors and preferred bidder Magna International hit snags. 

* Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB said it had agreed to buy free file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, and that it would find ways to compensate copyright owners for downloaded material. 
    
* Shanghai Airlines expects a detailed plan for a long-anticipated merger with China Eastern Airlines to emerge next month, a senior executive at the airline said. 

* Finland's Ruukki Group Plc said it would acquire Australia's platinum-group metals producer Sylvania Resources Ltd for 268 million euros ($378.1 million) under a merger implementation agreement.

* Russia's Alfa Group, locked in a five-year boardroom war with Telenor, has halted talks with the Norwegian telecoms group on a potential merger of their Russian and Ukrainian assets, an Alfa official said.