San Francisco – Global private equity firm The Carlyle Group today announced it has expanded its venture and growth capital team in the San Francisco Bay Area by hiring two new Managing Directors for the fund and relocating two professionals. Nick Sturiale, previously a General Partner at Sevin Rosen Funds in Menlo Park, CA, and Greg Rossmann, previously a Managing Director at Pequot Capital, will join the firm as Managing Directors. They will work out of the firm’s San Francisco and Menlo Park offices. In addition, Carlyle has relocated Ryan A. Harris, a Principal who previously worked in Carlyle’s buyout group in New York, and Rachel L. Winokur, a Vice President who joined Carlyle in 2007 from Datascope Corp., to make health care investments out of its new $605 million venture and growth fund, Carlyle Venture Partners III (CVP III). Carlyle closed CVP III, the third largest venture or growth capital fund raised in 2007, in September 2007.

“We believe that growth capital investing will remain vibrant even in turbulent markets, and that Silicon Valley will always be one of the most important homes in the world to high growth companies,” said Robert E. Grady, Carlyle Managing Director and Co-head of the firm’s U.S. Venture and Growth Capital fund. “We are delighted to have two experienced investment and operating professionals, Nick and Greg, join the team as we continue to make multi-stage growth equity investments. With hold periods longer than during the technology bubble, and with so many of the key opportunities for emerging companies coming from global growth, we believe Carlyle is a better partner than ever for companies and entrepreneurs as they seek to grow sales and build their businesses.”

Mr. Sturiale joined Sevin Rosen in 2000 and was involved with investments in Sevin Rosen funds VII, VIII and IX. He invested in and has been a director of Sevin Rosen companies Splunk, Solidcore, Teneros, YouSendIt, Sonopia and was the seed round investor in XenSource, which was sold to Citrix (CTXS) in 2007 for $500 million. Previously, Mr. Sturiale was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Timbre Technologies, a start-up infrastructure software company that was sold to Tokyo Electron (TSE), and served as an executive at technology companies Candescent and Quorum Software. He earned an M.B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a B.S. degree from California State University, Chico.

Mr. Rossmann joined Pequot Capital in 2000 and served as Managing Director in Pequot’s private equity and venture capital funds, managing more than $1.8 billion in committed capital investing out of the PPE2, PVP2 and PPE3 Pequot Private Equity and Venture funds. Mr. Rossmann led multi-stage investing at Pequot in companies such as Amber Networks (acquired by Nokia), Copan Systems, GCT Semiconductor and Touchdown Technologies. He also serves on the board of directors of NetGear (Nasdaq: NTGR). Previously, Mr. Rossmann was a Managing Director at Broadview International, a technology-focused investment bank. Earlier in his career he served in a variety of executive and engineering positions at Acterna Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices. He also co-founded a communications equipment startup, Telemaster Corporation. He earned an M.B.A .degree from the University of Santa Clara and a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Cincinnati.

Carlyle also announced today that it has expanded its venture and growth health care team on the West Coast to better capitalize on the large number of high growth medical device companies on the West Coast. Dr. Harris participated in Carlyle buyout investments in MedPointe (sold to Meda, Inc.), Qualicaps, MultiPlan, Connecticare and Align Technologies and has been instrumental in assisting successful medical technology companies in the Carlyle Venture Partners portfolio such as NeoVista, Proteus Biomedical, Transport Pharmaceuticals and AqueSys. He is a graduate of Stanford University and of the University of California, San Francisco Medical School.

Ms. Winokur joined Carlyle in 2007 and was previously a Corporate Officer and the Vice President of Business Development at Datascope Corp., a publicly traded medical device company focused on cardiovascular medicine and critical care. Ms. Winokur led Datascope’s mergers and acquisitions effort, where she completed various transactions with companies including Johnson & Johnson, Sorin Group, W.L. Gore and Merit Medical. She is a graduate of Duke University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Carlyle entered the venture capital business in 1997 with CVP I. Today, Carlyle’s venture and growth capital group manages more than $4 billion in nine funds operating in the United States, Europe and Asia. Carlyle has made successful venture and growth capital investments in such companies as Blackboard (Nasdaq: BBBB), C-Trip (Nasdaq: CTRP), NorthPoint, Matrics (acquired by Symbol Technologies), Indigo Systems (acquired by Flir Systems), Target Media (acquired by Focus Media Holdings), AuthenTec (Nasdaq: AUTH).

Carlyle’s latest U.S. fund, CVP III, employs a multi-stage “growth equity” approach, investing in a mix of early stage venture capital, expansion stage growth capital and growth buyout transactions. The fund helps its portfolio companies expand by using Carlyle’s global platform and domain expertise in such sectors as healthcare, telecom and media, defense and aerospace, automotive and logistics, energy, technology and business services to help its companies expand internationally and grow sales.

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