Whither the great wave?

摘要

"It's a bump in the road, but not an un-healthy one," says David Rubenstein. The morning after paying $21.3m for a copy of the Magna Carta dating from 1297, the boss of the Carlyle Group, a big private-equity firm, is in the mood to take the long view. The golden era of private equity is probably over, he concedes. "After a great ride for five years, private equity is entering a more challenging period," he predicts. Returns are likely to come down, if only because they have been so high, he says. But the industry has been through downturns before, and each time "changes were made and private equity came back stronger."