Virginia Gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin for the Red Team gave an interview during his last four months as co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU).
The interviewer asked what Youngkin saw today given he has such extensive investments in China and Asia?
"Data would suggest industry and capacity can stand back up reasonably quickly."
"Health concerns will be the biggest issue in this recovery coming up."
"We're watching traffic patterns, particularly in Beijing increase substantially. There is 11% more traffic during rush hour in Beijing today vs.last year."
Later in the interview Youngkin said:
We are seeing opportunities in Asia today.
That is the same China that received thousands of U.S. jobs from Carlyle affiliate United Components.
When Carlyle purchased UCI it had no Chinese subsidiaries. By 2010 UCI had thirteen subsidiaries in China or Hong Kong. The number of employees fell from 6,900 to 4,350. Carlyle pulled $35.3 million from UCI via a special dividend in 2007. Add their $2 million annual management fee and the total rises to $47.3 million.
Note that Youngkin was the Global Head of the Industrial Sector investment team from 2005 to 2008. He chaired Carlyle's Operating Committee according to Carlyle's 2009 Annual Report. What role did Glenn Youngkin have in shifting U.S. jobs to China?
In a question on the global institutional investor base Youngkin hedged, saying it isn't a homogeneous group. The interviewers said "I won't ask you specifically about the Saudi government." Glenn's PEU peers helped rehab the Saudi Crown Prince's tarnished reputation.
Youngkin said Zoom enabled Carlyle to cut down what used to be travel time. Carlyle established "data flow and sharing of ideas with our global investor base in a way that we could never really believe."
Youngkin highlighted his "great union partners" at JFK Airport Terminal One. "The kind of things that we have been able to progress at JFK are incredibly innovative and bring to bear learnings from around the world on how to develop infrastructure."
He called for oil prices to rebound over the next two to three years to $25 to $30 per barrel. Oil traded at over $80 a barrel yesterday.
Youngkin called for investment in energy renewables and Carlyle's strong commitment to ESG in the interview. Carlyle has affiliates that have whole business plans around an ESG strategy.
Diverse teams with diverse experiences can improve investment outcomes. Carlyle embedded diversity and inclusion in the firm. It's about diversity of experiences and thought, not box ticking.
The interviewer closed calling Youngkin a "steady Eddie" executive.
I'm not sure conservative Virginia voters would recognize their candidate, recently a globalist, union partnering, carbon lowering senior executive. Glenn Youngkin is now a raw meat tossing politician. There's nothing steady Eddie about that.
Update 10-31-21: Rabobank's Michael Every said "The kind of mess you've got in America between Blue and Red, no country wants that (kind of polarization)."
Every added China "never wants to repeat what happened to the U.S. They are fully cognizant how the U.S. was de-industrialized, hollowed out. They were the primary beneficiary of that." Youngkin and The Carlyle Group had a role in hollowing out local U.S. economies. A major business reporter wrote in 2011:
I have seen so many people -- particularly those in their 50s - 70s -- taken apart by what has happened in their industry as greed has hollowed out the economy. These are people took pride in their jobs and held themselves to this invisible standard that we all just took for granted, but is being wiped out.
The Carlyle Group scares me more than anything I've ever seen on Wall Street. It seems to exist to corrupt politicians and it's hard to know who they even represent.
Youngkin wants to go from corrupting politicians to being a corrupted one. That is a frightening prospect.
Red Team Candidate Youngkin said his opponent is "trying to run against somebody else besides me." Which version of Youngkin is that?
Update 11-1-21: "In the final days before the election Tuesday, many Republicans say they still have no idea what Youngkin really believes."
Update 11-2-21: Youngkin may ride into the governor's mansion after employing leverage. Who knew focusing on race and education would be a winning combination for a candidate who sent U.S. jobs to China?
“There’s a lot of, we can call it white backlash, white resistance, whatever you want to call it. It has to do with race. And so we live in a post-factual era … It doesn’t matter that [CRT] isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s this generalised attitude that whites are being put upon and we’ve got to do something about it. We being white voters.”
Bloomberg reported Youngkin led the 2018 infrastructure fund which bailed on their lead developer role for Corpus Christi Port expansion.
Update 12-3-21: Political pundits characterized Youngkin with "his gifts of evasion were allowing the voters to see him as something more, or less—you couldn’t be entirely sure which it was." The Blue team let Youngkin skate away from his PEU record. That's what they get for running a Carlyle Group limited partner in Terry McAuliffe. Greed would have won either way.
Update 12-12-21: ESG loving Youngkin will flip-flop and withdraw Virginia from an interstate climate pact, the "first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States." I bet Glenn was a big fan of the effort in May 2020. Carlyle says better businesses have climate resilience:
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, creating unprecedented risks and opportunities for businesses across all industries. Companies that can navigate these emerging challenges – from physical risks to policy shifts and technological disruptions – and seize the mounting opportunities of the energy transition, we expect will have the climate resilience to thrive in a changing world.
Youngkin's longtime employer has a greenhouse gas private equity offering:
As a core pillar of our firmwide strategy on climate change, we launched our Renewable and Sustainable Energy Fund (RSEF) to capture the opportunities created by the energy transition and commit to invest globally in the renewable and sustainable resources sector.--Carlyle Impact 2021
Achieved our third year of carbon neutrality across our 32 global offices and the activities of our more than 1,750 employees, after we became the first major private equity firm to make a carbon neutrality commitment in 2017.--Carlyle Taskforce om Climate Related Financial Disclosures Report 2020
Youngkin has historically bled greed and green.
Update 3-5-22: PEU Youngkin wants the "E for equity" removed from Virginia government. Does that make him a PU Governor?
The crusade against equity strikes Del. Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) as especially confounding because Youngkin took such a different tone when he led the Carlyle Group. Youngkin and co-CEO Kewsong Lee hired a chief diversity officer and put out a strongly worded statement condemning “racism and injustices” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by Minnesota police in 2020.
Update 6-17-22: WaPo found Youngkin's diversity roots. Apparently they were just shallow roots for his PEU image.
Youngkin was recognized for diversity practices when he was co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group private equity firm, but has adopted a far more hard-line stance since running for office last year.
