DealZone

Carlyle –at one time famous for having former presidents and prime ministers on its payroll– is taking a step to attract more women and minorities into the male-dominated world of private equity.

“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.

    JPMorgan is cutting 30 percent of its research department, according to two former employees, but the bank is keeping mum about its plans and declined to give details of the cuts.
    David DeRose and Leighton Thomas, co-founders of a Bear Stearns alternative research unit that moved to JPMorgan when that bank acquired Bear a year ago, said on Wednesday they sold the unit to an investment firm largely because they could not hire more staff under JPMorgan’s management.
    “If you stay under a research division that’s being cut 30 percent, we can’t get any headcount,” said DeRose.
    JPMorgan intends to shed 1,000 to 2,000 jobs from its investment bank this year, co-investment bank chief Steve Black said at the bank’s investor day in February.
    It was unclear whether the cuts DeRose mentioned are included in these figures and a JPMorgan spokesman declined comment.
    Research staff may be an easy target for cuts, since it is hard to quantify their contribution to the bank’s bottom line.
    And banks’ research divisions across Wall Street have been shrinking since the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2002 banned firms from using banking fees to pay analysts.

By Elinor Comlay

Staffers at the once No. 4 U.S. investment bank headed into its midtown Manhattan headquarters on Monday morning, armed with bags and suitcases of all sizes.

Their emotions ran the gamut.

One man caught his co-worker’s eye and threw his hands up in the air in dismay before hurrying into Lehman’s global headquarters, a few minutes’ walk from Times Square.

“It is madness,” one man said on the phone, as he walked by dozens of reporters lined up on the sidewalk in front of the building.