David Rubenstein

David Mark Rubenstein (born August 11, 1949) is an American lawyer, businessman, and philanthropist.

A former government official, he is a co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment company based in Washington, D.C.

Rubenstein is the chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Gallery of Art, the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He is the former chairman of the Duke University Board of Trustees and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 2022, he became chair of the University of Chicago's Board of Trustees.

According to Forbes, Rubenstein has a net worth of US$3.2 billion as of December 2022.

He leads a group that has reached an agreement to acquire the Baltimore Orioles.

Rubenstein grew up as an only child in a modest Jewish family in Baltimore.

He had a bar mitzvah ceremony.

His father was employed by the United States Postal Service and his mother was a homemaker.

His father's family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine.

Rubenstein graduated from the college preparatory high school Baltimore City College, an all-male school at the time.

He then attended Duke University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1970.

He earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, and was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.

From 1973 to 1975, Rubenstein practiced law in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

From 1975 to 1976, he served as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments.

Rubenstein also served as a deputy domestic policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter and worked in private practice in Washington, D.C.

In 1987, Rubenstein founded The Carlyle Group with William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel A. D'Aniello.

The firm has grown into a global investment firm with $293 billion of assets under management, with more than 1,800 employees in 31 offices on six continents.

According to A Pursuit of Wealth by Sicelo P. Nkambule, David Rubenstein expressed fear that the private equity boom would end in January 2006: "This has been a golden age for our industry, but nothing continues to be golden forever".

One month later, he said: "Right now we're operating as if the music's not going to stop playing and the music is going to stop. I am more concerned about this than any other issue".

According to Nkambule: "These concerns proved to be right as at the end of 2007 the buyout market collapsed...As leveraged loan activity came to an abrupt stop, private equity firms were unable to secure financing for their transactions."

In May 2008, Rubenstein said: "But once this period is over, once the debt on the books of the banks is sold and new lending starts, I think you'll see the private equity industry coming back in what I call the Platinum Age – better than it's ever been before. I do think that the private equity industry has a great future and that the greatest period for private equity is probably ahead of us."

Rubenstein has said that he was once offered the opportunity to meet Mark Zuckerberg (and invest in Facebook) before he dropped out of Harvard but decided against it, and this is his single greatest investment regret.

Rubenstein also said that he turned down a 20% stake in Amazon during the very early years of the company.

He told Amazon founder Jeff Bezos that if he got lucky and everything worked out he would at most be worth $300 million.

Peer to Peer, which began airing in October 2016, also airs on many PBS stations and is available on Curiosity Stream.

He also hosts History with David Rubenstein on PBS, a TV show produced by the New-York Historical Society.

Rubenstein also hosts the audio podcast "For the Ages", also produced by the New-York Historical Society.

In December 2023, Rubenstein was reported to be among potential buyers for the Baltimore Orioles.

Rubenstein previously considered buying the Washington Nationals.

In 2018, he formed Declaration Capital, a family office focused on venture, growth, real estate, and family-owned businesses.

Rubenstein was publicly criticized for the work of The Carlyle Group of which he is the chairman, which owns a number of mobile home parks and has been pushing poor people out of their mobile homes by hiking up the rental price.

In an episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver pointed out that manufactured homes are not easy or cheap to relocate, and so poor residents on fixed incomes face eviction and homelessness as rent increases threaten to price them out of their mobile home parks.

In October 2019, Rubenstein's first book was published.

Called The American Story: Interviews with Master Historians (Simon & Schuster), the book features interviews with historians talking about their areas of historical expertise.

Among others, Rubenstein interviews David McCullough on John Adams, Jon Meachem on Thomas Jefferson, Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton, and Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin.

His second book, How to Lead, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2020.

This book contains Rubenstein's reflections on leadership as well as 30 interviews with business, government, military, sports and cultural leaders.

In September 2021, Simon and Schuster published Rubenstein's third book, The American Experiment, which describes how America's government and democratic ideals have evolved over the centuries as told through the lives of Americans who have embodied the American dream.

Rubenstein hosts two shows on Bloomberg Television: The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations and Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein.