US investment fund Carlyle Group is looking at about 300 Japanese companies as part of its pipeline, a sign of the country’s ongoing private equity deal boom.
“We look at a lot of deals every day,” Kazuhiro Yamada, co-head of Japan’s buyout advisory team, said in an interview. “Even though competition is increasing, if you look at the number of potential deals, there really aren’t enough general partners to do them,” he said, referring to private equity firms and their executives.
Carlyle will likely announce two or three more transactions in Japan this year, Yamada said. The biggest challenge is having enough employees to oversee and manage the deals Carlyle wants to make, he added.
