David Rubenstein
David Rubenstein
David Mark Rubensteinis an American financier and philanthropist best known as co-founder and co-chief executive officer of The Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment company based in Washington D.C. He is also currently serving as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and chairman of the board of trustees at Duke University, his alma mater. According to the Forbes ranking of the wealthiest people in America, Rubenstein has a net worth of $2.5 billion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth11 August 1949
CountryUnited States of America
I am involved in a lot of nonprofits. And when I reached the ripe old age of 60, I wanted to provide leadership to some I had been involved in.
I really hope that the philanthropy movement is seen not just as wealthy people giving money away but wealthy people giving away their time, their energy and their ideas.
Sometimes the best decisions in life are on the spur of the moment. So I generally try to do what I think is right. And sometimes I make mistakes.
It's clear to me when you do private equity well, you're making companies more efficient and helping them grow and become more profitable. That success means our investors - such as public pension funds - benefit, which contributes to the economic wealth of society.
People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.
Persist - don't take no for an answer. If you're happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you'll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.
There is too much money at stake. At some point, somebody will blink and work out a compromise. If not, there will be plenty of competitors to Blackberry to fill the lacuna.
This may be the most profitable private equity deal of all time.
The business of New Orleans is tourism, and New Orleans has got to get back to business. There's all this talk about bringing people back to New Orleans, but without tourism there won't be any jobs for them to come home to.
This is an incredible success if you look at the things we got out of it. People seeing who we are and what we're about.
This has been a golden age for our industry but nothing continues to be golden forever.
Last spring at our general body meeting we took a poll of 50 students and Carville was the top choice of the people we put up for consideration. We wanted someone who was successful, popular, dynamic and engaging, and he fits the bill on all of those.
I wouldn't be surprised if returns came down eventually but I don't know what would be the precipitating factor.
It is obviously frothy but I have not seen anything that I think will cause a gigantic crash in the near future.