Carlyle Group filed on Tuesday for a $100 million offering for its common units, making it the latest private equity group to list on public markets.
In June, Reuters reported that Carlyle was moving closer to an initial public offering and could raise around $1 billion.
Carlyle was valued at $20 billion in September 2007, when an investment unit of the Abu Dhabi government bought a 7.5 per cent stake, before the credit crisis sent stock markets sliding.
Carlyle will join rivals Blackstone Group LP, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and Apollo Global Management as publicly traded private equity companies.
Washington-based Carlyle told the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Credit Suisse are underwriting the IPO.
Carlyle, co-founded in 1987 by David Rubenstein, said it generated economic net income, a measure of profitability used by private equity firms, of over $1 billion in 2010 and approximately $770 million in the first six months of this year.
As of end-June, it said it had $153 billion in assets under management.
Carlyle has invested in companies including Dunkin Brands, Alliance Boots and Freescale Semiconductor.
The filing did not reveal how many units the company planned to sell or their expected price.
The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.
