What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our legal team is completely integrated into the life cycle of each investment, working seamlessly across all of Carlyle’s global multi-asset platform, covering private equity investments through to credit transactions, renewable and sustainable energy, and infrastructure deals. Consequently, members of the legal team consistently work with deal teams on high profile transactions across a broad spectrum of assets, industries and geographies.

Considering the scale and breadth of Carlyle’s operations, with $300bn in assets under management, a significant recent challenge has been the conflict in Ukraine. The team has been at the forefront of spearheading the firm’s response to the conflict, playing an essential role in proactively mapping and identifying risks early on, establishing and rolling out an impactful and robust action plan, and setting up top data monitoring and analytics tools and resources to enable efficient and comprehensive ongoing monitoring and risk calibration.

The steps taken by the team have helped hugely with business continuity, considering the impact of evolving sanctions measures and countermeasures, supply chain disruption issues, global political, business and media focus, or a heightened risk of cyber-attacks. Furthermore, these steps have enabled the firm to identify that Carlyle’s overall exposure to the conflict has been minimal.

The unusual business environment created by the pandemic has been swiftly followed by the Ukraine crisis, and attendant supply chain costs rising and increasing inflation. Are you now putting more emphasis on preparing for the unforeseen and, if so, what does this entail?

The onset of the pandemic and more recently the conflict has given the team the opportunity to adapt to a new era in risk management, supporting the firm and its portfolio through volatile and uncertain periods, by identifying and responding to areas of risk.

Right from the onset of the pandemic, the team prepared pandemic response policies and procedures that were rolled out to the portfolio. These provided a quick and considered action plan to help tackle the impact of Covid-19.

A key feature of the team’s response to the Ukraine conflict has been its effective use of technology platforms and data management software and other data points from various sources across the firm (including competition reviews, employment surveys, anti-trust responses, deal due diligence, compliance surveys and reaching out to the leaders and general counsel of individual portfolio companies) to position the firm to react quickly and effectively in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment.