Carlyle Exec Says Investors Want Less Software, More Hardware

Investors want private equity firms to move away from the software sector and toward defense companies, according to John Redett, co-president at Carlyle Group Inc.

“The old world is the new world and what LPs want to talk about are industrial businesses, defense, national security, supply chain resilience and energy,” Redett said during a panel discussion at the SuperReturn conference in Berlin on Wednesday.

His comments follow a challenging few months for private capital providers, whose big bets on software companies in recent years are now a cause for worry because of the emergence of new artificial intelligence tools. ...