Carlyle's founders get $57.6 million each in 2012

By Greg Roumeliotis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The founders of Carlyle Group LP received $57.6 million each in dividends from their stake in the private equity firm and executive pay in 2012, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday, down from $137.8 million in 2011.

David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D'Aniello, who founded Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle in 1987 and are now in their sixties, each forfeited a bonus of around $3.5 million they received in previous years.

Yet most of their profits come from their ownership of the firm. They received $57.3 million each from their individual 15.4 percent stakes in Carlyle. They each also received $281,250 in executive compensation.

In aggregate, this was down from the $137.8 million they received in 2011, before the firm raised $671 million in an initial public offering in May 2012 by selling a roughly 10 percent stake. Carlyle's distributable earnings were also down, from $864.4 million in 2011 to $687.9 million in 2012.

"We're all about alignment of interests. If our investors do well, we do well. The founders reinvested most of their gains and gave much to worthy causes," Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman said.

Rubenstein, Conway and D'Aniello received $78.1 million, $140.1 million and $80 million from Carlyle's funds respectively in 2012 as a result of investing alongside the firm's clients. In the same year, they invested $78.7 million, $140 million and $78.3 million respectively in Carlyle's funds.

Overall, Carlyle and its employees increased their commitments to the firm's investment funds in 2012 by approximately $1 billion.

The earnings of Blackstone Group LP head Stephen Schwarzman were flat in 2012 at around $213 million, while Leon Black, the CEO at private equity rival Apollo Global Management LLC , closed in on him with a 73 percent rise in his earnings to $180.2 million.

KKR & Co LP's co-founders and chief executives, Henry Kravis and George Roberts, received about $137 million and $141 million respectively in executive compensation and cash dividends in 2012, up by more than 45 percent over what they received in 2011.

With $170 billion in assets under management across 113 funds and 67 fund-of-fund vehicles, Carlyle has diversified beyond private equity in alternative asset classes such as corporate credit, real estate and hedge funds. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Stephen Coates)