Latest news with #TheCarlyleGroup
Bloomberg
22-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
How Carlyle CEO Harvey Schwartz Made It to the Top
Wall Street is a place where who you know—as much as what you know—can make all the difference. For a young Harvey Schwartz, that axiom took on a very different meaning than its usual combination of wealth and privilege. Now the chief executive of The Carlyle Group Inc., Schwartz, 61, climbed an unlikely path to the top. It began with a teenage struggle for success both in academics and athletics, navigating the mental health issues of his parents and eventually failing out of of high school in Morristown, New Jersey. On this episode of Bullish with Sonali Basak, we sit down with Schwartz to hear how the hard lessons of his difficult early years, and the helping hands of key people in his life, turned everything around.
New York Times
21-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Former NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. resigns from The Carlyle Group
Former NFL Players Association executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. resigned from his role at The Carlyle Group, a spokesperson confirmed to The Athletic on Monday. The spokesperson did not give details as to when or why Howell resigned. ESPN first reported the news. On Thursday, Howell resigned from his role with the NFLPA amid rising criticism over the union's leadership and concerns about a potential conflict of interest involving Howell and his involvement with The Carlyle Group. Advertisement As reported by ESPN on July 10, Howell worked as a paid, part-time consultant to The Carlyle Group since March 2023, three months before he was elected NFLPA executive director. He stayed in the role even after the NFL approved private equity minority investors, including The Carlyle Group, in August 2024. Two sources with knowledge of the NFLPA's hiring process told The Athletic that union leadership was aware of Howell's work with the firm during the hiring process. One year later, when the firm had the opportunity to invest in the NFL, four sources with knowledge of the situation said discussions about Howell's role occurred and lawyers for the NFLPA and The Carlyle Group decided Howell's work in the aerospace and defense division was distant enough from the group's work with the NFL. An NFLPA source with knowledge of the situation disputed details in the ESPN report, which stated that an NFLPA attorney had requested that Howell consider resigning from his role with The Carlyle Group while still serving as executive director of the NFLPA. Three other sources said they had not heard of an NFLPA lawyer making that request to Howell. Reporting from ESPN, Pro Football Talk and 'Pablo Torre Finds Out' uncovered layers of dysfunction within union leadership within the past month, including findings that the NFLPA reached a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to hide information about an arbitration decision involving potential collusion over guaranteed contracts. In a statement announcing his resignation from the NFLPA, Howell said: 'It's clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day.' JC Tretter, former NFLPA chief strategy officer and a frontrunner to take over as interim executive director, resigned from the organization on Sunday. In an interview published by CBS, Tretter said he did not want to be considered for the interim job, nor be a part of the NFLPA. A source briefed on the procedure said the NFLPA executive board still plans to meet in the coming days to determine a process for selecting an interim executive director.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'It went too far': What's next for the NFLPA after union chief Lloyd Howell's resignation?
Days before the sudden resignation of NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell on Thursday night, I asked a source with deep union ties to forecast the fallout of media reports detailing troubling questions facing the association chief. The conversation came on the heels of multiple ESPN reports that exposed, among other things, a conflict of interest that appeared to exist for Howell, who had also been operating as a paid, part-time consultant for the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, which had been recently cleared by the NFL to buy minority stakes in league franchises. The reporting, which would expand as the days went on, raised a clear-cut question about whether Howell could ultimately continue as the head of the NFLPA, which had a longstanding history of disallowing executive directors to hold paid side jobs — let alone positions with companies or firms that were mingling with NFL teams. Aside from the ESPN reporting, multiple outlets had fleshed out a confidentiality agreement between the NFLPA and NFL, which kept secret details of an arbitration decision that determined league executives had pressed NFL team owners to reduce guaranteed player compensation. Those reports, and more to come, would lay down a baseline question: Could Howell survive this? 'It's going to be whatever the players want,' the source with union ties said. 'Are they going to tolerate this? There's always been a dicey connection between the player leadership [inside the union] and the rest of the player membership. Regardless of what the player leadership thinks about Lloyd, I think the last week of headlines has potentially made his relationship with the rest of the membership untenable. … You're starting to see some cracks.' Just days after this conversation, and on the heels of additional reports that raised an array of other potential concerns swirling around the union, Howell tendered his resignation to the NFLPA's executive committee. When the sun rose Friday morning, the NFLPA no longer had an executive director, leaving leadership to scramble for an emergency meeting in the coming days to set a new course. One of the first questions that will need to be answered is whether chief strategy officer JC Tretter will remain. Tretter served as the president of the NFLPA from 2020 to 2024, overlapping with his final years playing for the Cleveland Browns. It was during that time when he constructed a highly secretive election process that ultimately concluded with Howell landing the union's executive director position. In turn, Howell then hired Tretter as the union's chief strategy officer, creating at least the perception that the two men were linked at the hip inside the association. We'll get to that pressing business in a moment. But first, a small autopsy on Howell's quietly turbulent two-year stint with the union. Missteps over talk of 18th game, schmoozing with Jerry Jones Speaking with current and ex-union sources over the past week, it was clear that while Howell had the backing of most (if not all) of the 10 player representatives on the executive committee, his standing didn't come without questions. Beyond some of the obvious concerns — most especially his standing as a consultant for The Carlyle Group and the decision to enter into the aforementioned confidentiality agreement with the NFL — some inside the union bristled at Howell's penchant to be a dealmaker and collaborator first and foremost, which was something of a departure from the saber-rattling and often confrontational style of the previous executive director, DeMaurice Smith. It was something that pricked membership most significantly when his initial stance and comments on adding an 18th game to the NFL season featured an open-mindedness that raised eyebrows. Eventually, it became clear to Howell that the vast majority of his membership were against it, leading to a course correction that appeared at times to be a full reversal between his first and second years as the union head. Some in the union continued to be wary that Howell was too openly embracing the NFL and its club owners as partners rather than adversaries at the negotiating table. Some of it was fueled by a fact-finding tour that he underwent in his first year on the job, meeting with 25 franchise owners or ownership groups as he began to get his feet under him as the head of the union. Some of it was fueled by media accounts of that tour — including one report in The Athletic, which showcased Howell meeting with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, in which Jones brought along several generations of his family as a show of respect for the new union head. As one source with union ties framed it, 'If Jerry [Jones] is rolling out the red carpet and loving up your union leader with introductions to his whole family, it's not out of the kindness of his heart. It's the first move of a [labor] negotiation that hasn't started yet.' While that was a small matter of perception, it was one of a handful of instances where some in the union wondered where Howell wanted to take his relationship with his NFL counterparts and how he'd ultimately get there. At times, there were complaints about a lack of clarity in the NFLPA's mission, with some union sources recounting Howell talking about 'having a North Star' as an organization, but also not fully understanding what the union head's 'North Star' had become. 'Lloyd doesn't like friction,' one source said. 'We drifted a bit as a union,' another added. 'It went too far.' Is JC Tretter next to go in NFLPA? Interestingly, all of this was an undercurrent before the past 10 days of reporting, which then added multiple red-flag questions on top of the fading (or at least changing) identity of a union. Now the NFLPA's players — from the 10-person executive committee to the 32-player board of representatives to the thousands of player members — have arrived at a pivot point. It's a nexus of questions about what went wrong with Howell at the head of the shop after only two years, and what the players want to change moving forward. That may have to begin with a decision on Tretter's fate. His hiring by Howell as the chief strategy officer was previously supported by the player leadership, who wanted to retain some continuity between themselves and the new executive director. It stands to reason that the same individuals who embraced continuity in the transition from Smith to Howell will continue to want it in the transition from Howell to whoever comes next. At the end of the day, Howell's red flags may not be construed as also being Tretter's red flags. As one source put it, 'JC is not a bad person or a bad actor. His intentions are in fact pure and I think he wants to do what is best for the players.' That priority — what's best for the players — will be at the top of a list of questions that's just now being strung together. For the second time in two years, it will have to be answered by diving into yet another election process while simultaneously sorting out what went so wrong with the last one.
Daily Mail
18-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS NFL rocked as head of players' union Lloyd Howell Jr. resigns after string of controversies
Lloyd Howell Jr. stepped down as executive director of the NFL Players Association on Thursday night following weeks of scrutiny for multiple blunders, including a reported conflict of interest and a decision to hide key parts of an arbitration ruling from the players. 'It's clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day,' Howell said in a statement. 'For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately. I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season. 'I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish at the NFLPA over the past two years. I will be rooting for the players from the sidelines as loud as ever, and I know the NFLPA will continue to ensure that players remain firmly at the center of football's future.' Last week, ESPN reported that Howell held a part-time role as a consultant for The Carlyle Group, one of a small handful of private equity firms that the NFL has approved to pursue minority ownership in franchises. ESPN's reporting included a former lead outside counsel for the NFLPA, Jim Quinn, calling it 'an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL.' It was not the first blow to Howell's reputation this offseason. In June, the 'Pablo Torre Finds Out' podcast published an arbitrator's report from January, when the NFLPA and the league were at odds over potential collusion by team owners to tamp down the growth of quarterback contracts. The arbitrator, Christopher Droney, ruled that there wasn't sufficient evidence of collusion between owners - but he went on to say that 'by a clear preponderance of the evidence,' commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL's general counsel encouraged owners to restrict guaranteed money in player contracts. Howell and the union reportedly had a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to keep the full report from getting out. Howell briefed the players but didn't provide them copies of the report, according to ESPN. Furthermore, Howell sits on the board of OneTeam Partners, a group licensing firm that is under investigation by the FBI.
Reuters
18-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
NFLPA exec director Lloyd Howell Jr. steps down amid controversy
July 18 - Lloyd Howell Jr. stepped down as executive director of the NFL Players Association on Thursday night following weeks of scrutiny for multiple blunders, including a reported conflict of interest and a decision to hide key parts of an arbitration ruling from the players. "It's clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day," Howell said in a statement. "For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately. I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season. "I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish at the NFLPA over the past two years. I will be rooting for the players from the sidelines as loud as ever, and I know the NFLPA will continue to ensure that players remain firmly at the center of football's future." Last week, ESPN reported that Howell held a part-time role as a consultant for The Carlyle Group, one of a small handful of private equity firms that the NFL has approved to pursue minority ownership in franchises. ESPN's reporting included a former lead outside counsel for the NFLPA, Jim Quinn, calling it "an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL." It was not the first blow to Howell's reputation this offseason. In June, the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast published an arbitrator's report from January, when the NFLPA and the league were at odds over potential collusion by team owners to tamp down the growth of quarterback contracts. The arbitrator, Christopher Droney, ruled that there wasn't sufficient evidence of collusion between owners -- but he went on to say that "by a clear preponderance of the evidence," commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL's general counsel encouraged owners to restrict guaranteed money in player contracts. Howell and the union reportedly had a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to keep the full report from getting out. Howell briefed the players but didn't provide them copies of the report, according to ESPN. Furthermore, Howell sits on the board of OneTeam Partners, a group licensing firm that is under investigation by the FBI. --Field Level Media
