Genachowski Joins The Carlyle Group

Private equity firm The Carlyle Group today named Julius Genachowski a managing director and partner of its U.S. buyout team. He will focus on investments in global technology, media and telecom, including Internet and mobile.

Genachowski is returning to the private sector after serving as chairman of the FCC for four years, leaving last May. He brings to Carlyle almost 20 years of experience in technology, media and telecom. Genachowski joins Carlyle today and will be based in Washington.

Allan Holt, co-head of the U.S. buyout team, said: “We are pleased to welcome Julius to Carlyle. His addition makes a successful U.S. buyout team even stronger and better positioned to generate premium returns for our investors.”

Genachowski said: “It’s an exciting time in the space, with an ongoing wave of innovation creating significant opportunities for investment. I’m grateful to have been part of developments around tech, media and telecom for many years, working with some of the best in the business, and I’m looking forward to joining my new and superbly talented Carlyle colleagues to help find and build businesses.”

Genachowski was chairman of the FCC from June 2009 to May 2013 and prioritized the development of broadband, often putting him at odds with broadcasters. Genachowski promoted an incentive auction that will force many broadcasters to move to new channels to make additional spectrum available for smartphones — and many broadcasters feel he has disparaged their concerns about the impact that the initiative will have on broadcasters and viewers.

In addition, he promoted an initiative that requires broadcasters to divulge sensitive political advertising revenue figures — and other station information that had previously been difficult for the public and competitors to access — online. Also on Genachowski’s watch, the agency’s Democrats advanced a proposal to make joint sales agreements and shared services agreements attributable going forward and to unwind existing ones within two years.

On the positive side of the ledger for broadcasters, Genachowski resisted cable TV industry pleas to make it harder for broadcasters to negotiate for retransmission consent payments.

Genachowski worked for more than a decade in the private sector prior to his FCC appointment. He helped build IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owned and operated multiple Internet and media businesses, including Expedia, Ticketmaster and USA Network. He joined the company in 1997, when it consisted of two operating businesses (Silver King Broadcasting and HSN), and as a senior executive helped grow it, through acquisition and organically, to a company with numerous operating businesses, more than $6 billion in annual revenue and more than 25,000 employees globally. During this period, Business Week named Genachowski one of 25 “managers to watch” in the media sector.

Since leaving the FCC, Genachowski has taught a joint class at Harvard’s Business and Law Schools, and served as a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, the non-partisan education and policy organization. Over the course of his career, he has been a special adviser at General Atlantic, a board member and advisor to several public and private companies, and a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice David Souter.