SiliconBeat

Private-equity behometh The Carlyle Group is pulling the plug on its Silicon Valley office less than a year after setting it up. The move is part of a 10 percent reduction in force the company is undertaking, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal Thursday.

“The markets are terrible and we need to adjust accordingly,” Carlyle Group spokesman Christopher Ullman told UPI. “We’re making the adjustments to deal with the current realities of the economy.”

Carlyle only opened its Menlo Park office this past January. The move gave Carlyle’s tech buyout team a Silicon Valley presence and expanded its venture activities, according to pehub.com, an online public forum for the private equity community, which says that Carlyle managing director Todd Neunam was in charge of the local buyout team, but ultimately returned to the firms Washington D.C. headquarters to lead its industrials group.

Carlyle had $91.5 billion of assets under management committed to 66 funds as of September 30, 2008. Among its Silicon Valley investments is Nanosolar, the San Jose maker of thin-film solar panels that raised $300 million in venture funding in August from investors including Carlyle, EDF Energies Nouvelles, AES Solar, Riverstone Holdings, Energy Capital Partners, Lone Pine Capital, and the Skoll Foundation, along with previous backers GLG Partners and Beck Energy.