Carlyle Group files for IPO

After years of speculation, one of the world's largest private equity firms unveils plans to go public.

Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein

The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm with around $153 billion in assets under management, today filed to go public. The offering is for only $100 million (expect that to be a placeholder), with J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Credit Suisse serving as co-lead underwriters.

Carlyle did not identify on which exchange it plans to trade or its prospective ticker symbol.

It also has not yet set offering terms -- not unusual in an initial filing -- which means we do not yet know how much the firm hopes to be worth. For context, The Blackstone Group (BX) has a current market cap of $6.2 billion, while Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) has a 2.57 billion market cap.

The majority of Carlyle's assets are in direct private equity, but it also has significant hedge fund, real estate and fund-of-funds operations.

No word yet on if company executives plan to sell shares in the offering (as Blackstone did) or if all the stock will be newly-issued (a la KKR).

I plan to write much more about this later today, but a quick note of caution: Don't read too much into the timing. In other words, this isn't about another market peak in private equity. Or a belief that the public equities market is about to stabilize. Or really anything beyond the fact that Carlyle has been planning this for years, in part because it believes having public currency will help it better compete with already-public firms Blackstone, KKR and Apollo (APO).

Here is some of Fortune's recent coverage of Carlyle:

• Carlyle vs. Blackstone: Tale of the Tape
• Carlyle to manage for Michigan
• Sandler O'Neill's journey from Ground Zero
• What would Carlyle be worth in an IPO?

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