Carlyle power co-head Mancini to retire in June

Robert Mancini, a managing director at The Carlyle Group and co-head of its power investment group since 2012, will retire at the end of June.

Carlyle spokesman Christopher Ullman confirmed to Infrastructure Investor Mancini’s plans to leave Carlyle Power Partners in a little over a month. He said Matt O’Connor will take over sole management of the business, which will include continuing to invest the firm’s second power infrastructure fund, the $1.5 billion Carlyle Power Partners II.

Mancini was hired in 2012, shortly before Carlyle’s first power fund closed, following a deal in which the firm acquired US power company Cogentrix from Goldman Sachs. Mancini was chief executive of Cogentrix and a managing director for power asset investments at Goldman Sachs, where he had worked since 1993. He joined Robert Dove, a founder and co-head of Carlyle’s power group, who is now a special advisor to the firm.

Built around the Cogentrix portfolio, Carlyle Power Partners focuses investments on assets in North American power markets. Its second fund closed in April 2016 and includes in its portfolio the natural gas operating company Southeast PowerGen and the natural gas plant Rhode Island State Energy Center.

In addition to power, Carlyle runs an infrastructure investment team led by Andrew Marino and Peter Taylor. That group is known to be raising a $2.5 billion global infrastructure fund, which Infrastructure Investor reported reached a first close on $600 million last November.