Carlyle appoints private equity lead
Private equity industry veteran Geoff Hutchinson will join the Carlyle Group as head of private equity in Australia and New Zealand.
Hutchinson joins Carlyle from Morrison & Co, where he was co-head for Australia and New Zealand.
Before that, he was managing director at Pacific Equity Partners, where he worked for almost 14 years leading and executing multiple market-leading private equity deals across the consumer, healthcare, education and business services sectors.
He also previously worked at Bain & Company for ten years.
Hutchinson is tasked with building on Carlyle's long and established presence in Australasia and will lead the investment advisory team and oversee investments across the firm's priority sectors in consumer, healthcare, technology and financial services.
Carlyle Asia chairman X.D. Yang noted Hutchinson's experience serving on both private and public company boards and said he was excited to welcome him to Carlyle's Asia Pacific leadership team.
"Carlyle has an established track record of over 20 years in Australasia, where we have completed several notable transactions such as Healthscope, Coates Hire, Qube Logistics, iNova Pharmaceuticals and Accolade Wines.
"Geoff will play an important role in further strengthening our investment advisory platform and steering our continued growth in Australia and New Zealand where we see attractive opportunities to invest in what we consider to be high-quality businesses."
For his part, Hutchinson pointed to Carlyle's ability to deliver some of the most prominent deals in the market. "With a shared conviction about the growth potential of this market and the opportunity to drive value for investors and businesses, I look forward to building upon the solid foundation and successes that Carlyle Asia has established."
Carlyle has invested more than US$24 billion of equity in more than 200 private equity transactions in tAsia Pacific and more than US$1.7 billion in six transactions in Australia and New Zealand as of June 30, 2022.
