Carlyle holds $51 billion in dry power after raising $6.5B in Q3

All told, Carlyle Group’s fundraising efforts drew in $6.5 billion in the quarter, bringing its money-raising total over the past 12 months to $22.9 billion.

And with the fourth quarter still underway, Carlyle Group co-CEO David Rubenstein said 2013 will go down as “our best fundraising year since the financial crisis and the second-best in our firm’s history.”

All told, Carlyle Group has 14 funds in the market and it’s actively launching new strategies.

“We believe that investors of all types and from all parts of the world are increasingly looking to Carlyle to address more of their alternative investment needs,” Rubenstein said on the firm’s conference call with analysts. “Our fundraising success is due to our track record over 26 years, our global brand, the reach of our firm, and the quality and scale of our fundraising team.”

Carlyle Partners VI LP ranks at the top of the firm’s current fundraising list with a final size of no less than $12.9 billion, well above its original target of about $10 billion.

“We are finalizing allocations and legal work and will announce the formal close of the fund in the coming weeks,” Rubenstein said.

The fund rivals the $13.7 billion raised in the vintage 2007 Carlyle Partners V. That fund turned in a net IRR of 13 percent as of Sept. 30, according to Carlyle.

Carlyle said it made progress on its Europe, Asia and Japan buyout funds, as well as its Sub-Saharan African fund, international energy fund, financial services fund and its business development company [BDC] programs.

AlpInvest, an advisory firm and fund manager owned by Carlyle Group, closed AlpInvest Secondaries Fund V with $750 million, as part of an overall $4.2 billion secondary program.

Carlyle is also working to close a collateralized loan obligation fund in the U.S., part of more than $3 billion in CLO fundraising expected in 2013.

On the deal front, Carlyle closed the sale of 650 Madison Avenue in New York City and generated proceeds from the initial public offering of Kaiyuan Hotel, a China-based hotel chain.

Already in the fourth quarter, Carlyle Group launched an U.S. IPO of telecommunications cable-maker CommScope Holding Co Inc, which added $2 billion in market value to the firm’s portfolio.

The firm’s total dry powder of $51.1 billion includes $22.8 billion in its corporate private equity units, $1.6 billion in Global Market Strategies, $9.1 billion in Real Assets and $17.6 billion in its Solutions unit.

Realized proceeds in the quarter came to $3 billion, bringing its total for the first nine months of 2013 to $11 billion. Carlyle deployed $1.9 billion of equity in 96 new or follow-on investments across 27 carry funds.