Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Meet the Carlyle Group

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carlyle_Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlyle_Group


Click on either link to make the acquaintance of one of the partners in Virginia Uranium.

According to Wikipedia (which as 'open source' is constantly being edited and thus changed):

The Carlyle Group is a Washington, D.C. based global private equity investment firm with more than $74.9 billion of equity capital under management.[1] The firm operates four fund families, focusing on leveraged buyouts, venture & growth capital, real estate and leveraged finance investments. The firm employs more than 563 investment professionals in 21 countries with several offices in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia; its portfolio companies employ more than 286,000 people worldwide. Carlyle has over 1100 investors in 68 countries.

Carlyle deals in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Consumer & Retail, Energy & Power, Healthcare, Real Estate, Technology & Business Services, Telecommunications & Media, and Transportation. The Carlyle Group's investments are focused on East Asia, Europe and North America, with most investment money coming from the United States (65%), Europe (25%), Asia (6%), Latin America, and the Middle East. Defense investments represent about 1% of the group's current portfolio[citation needed] — though this translates, for example, into a 33.8% ownership of QinetiQ, the UK's recently privatized defence company.

In the book House of Bush, House of Saud, author Craig Unger states that Saudi Arabian interests have given $1.4 billion to firms connected to the Bush family. Nearly 85% of the $1.4 billion, or about $1.18 billion, refers to Saudi Arabian government contracts awarded to defense contractor BDM in the early to mid 1990s. Carlyle, however, sold its interest in BDM before former President George H. W. Bush joined as an advisor. Although, it should be noted that Bush family confidant James A. Baker was on the board when the interests were sold.

The Saudi Arabian relatives of Osama bin Laden were also investors in Carlyle until October 2001 when the family sold its $2.02 million investment back to the firm in light of the public controversy surrounding bin Laden’s family after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The bin Laden family has publicly disowned the al-Qaeda leader.[6] Osama bin Laden has no publicly known or acknowledged economic interest in Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), whose investments were in part managed by the Carlyle Group until the arrangement was terminated by mutual consent.

The connection to Virginia Uranium?
Greg Beard. Mr. Beard is on both the board of VU and Carlyle/Riverstone. Read on...

From RudeClerk, the following:

http://rudeclerk.blogspot.com/2007/10/virginia-uranium-and-carlyle-group.html


Sunday, October 07, 2007

Virginia Uranium and the Carlyle Group?

The value of the Pittsylvania uranium is estimated at $10 billion. For a sense of scale that's roughly one third of the entire market cap of Dominion Resources. A background article by Star-Tribune Editor Tim Davis portrays Virginia Uranium as a company run by Virginians with deep commitments to the community, its safety and its heritage. Davis also explains what happened with Marline Corp and the Pittsylvania County uranium deposits.

Marline announced its uranium discovery in 1982 and formed a partnership with Union Carbide to mine and mill the Coles Hill deposit.

A year later, Virginia established the Uranium Administration Group to design a framework for permitting uranium mining.

The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission concluded that uranium mining could proceed if certain recommendations were enacted into law in 1984.

However, stiff opposition, mainly from environmental groups, slowed the project, and eventually led to a moratorium.

Several years later, a sharp drop in the price of uranium - from $40 a pound when the discovery was made to $9 a pound - forced Marline to suspend the project.

When the price didn't rebound, the company abandoned the project altogether in 1989 and the mineral rights returned to Coles and Bowen.

According to Reynolds, Marline and Union Carbide spent about $42 million on the Coles Hill project.

The article gives up a bit more, listing some members of the board of directors of Virginia Uranium. Among them is Greg Beard. Beard is a managing director for Carlyle Group (Carlyle/ Riverstone). He sits on the board of directors of the following companies, all in Carlyle's energy and power portfolio:
  • CDM Resource Management
  • International Logging
  • Legend Natural Gas II
  • Legend Natural Gas III
  • Phoenix Exploration Co.
  • Targe Energy
  • Vantage Energy LLC
Carlyle's online bio of Greg Beard holds back on two of his directorships: Vantage Energy and Virginia Uranium. But the SEC filings for Carlyle's CDM are required to cite both of these positions. From Carlyle's page on Vantage:

Vantage Energy, LLC is a natural gas exploration, acquisition and development company with a focus in unconventional resources throughout onshore regions of the United States.

The TSX Venture Exchange is a Canadian stock exchange. While the TSX deals mostly with senior equities, the TSX Venture Exchange is a public venture capital marketplace for emerging and/or junior companies who have not yet met the requirements for listing on the TSX. A little digging shows that the members of Virginia Uranium's board who are most familiar with the global shell games (and takeovers) and wide market cycles in the mineral markets are hardly stakeholders when it comes to preserving the health and well-being of the region. Two Canadian venture investors also sit on Virginia Uranium's board: geologist/ prospector Ron Netolivsky and Peter Grosskopf.


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