Carlyle Group announces new board members, robust profits The Carlyle Group has named Travelers chairman Jay Fishman and former Marriott International executive William Shaw to its board of directors, and reported robust 2011 profits as the company prepares to go public. The board appointments, contained in a regulatory filing, also include Janet Hill, a principal with Hill Family Advisors in Fairfax, Va., and mother of professional basketball star Grant Hill; former Goldman Sachs partner Lawton Fitts; Dr. Thomas Robertson, dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; and James Hance, a former executive at Bank of America. Carlyle said one of its managing directors, Edward Mathias, also will join the board, along with its three co-founders,: chairman Daniel A. D'Aniello, William E. Conway Jr. and David M. Rubenstein. The information is in the latest amendment to Carlyle's September filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the Washington-based firm declared its intention to sell shares to the public. Those shares are expected to go on the market as early as the second quarter of this year. Carlyle is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with $147 billion in assets under management. The report says Carlyle currently has $37.5 billion in "dry powder," which are cash commitments from its limited partners that it is looking to invest. Carlyle's distributable earnings, the company's metric for profit, were $864 million in 2011, $274 million of which came in the fourth quarter. The company's profit for 2010 was $342 million. The private equity firm also distributed $18.8 billion to its limited partners, which includes profits as well as the money those limited partners gave the firm to invest. As a sign that the economy may be improving, Carlyle reported the value of its investments increased 16 percent in 2011, including a seven-percent jump in the fourth quarter. The company also reported it has paid off the remainder of a $500 million loan to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development Corp., which owns just over 9 percent of Carlyle.