Carlyle Group Courts Wall Street

As it lays the groundwork for its upcoming initial public offering, Carlyle Group has been meeting privately with analysts and investors to persuade them that the firm is worth at least as much as its most richly valued competitor, Blackstone Group. It may be a tough sell.

There are only a handful of publicly traded private equity firms, and the stock market has not been kind to them. Blackstone completed its IPO on June 21, 2007, at $31 a share. The stock fell below that level a week later and never recovered. KKR has lost value since it sold stakes to investors in Amsterdam in May 2006. Its shares are up about 25 percent since listing on the New York Stock Exchange last year. Apollo Global Management’s shares are down 32 percent since they began trading publicly in March.