Carlyle Resumes a Holiday Tradition: Funny Videos

Some financial firms mail out elaborate holiday cards. Others email their holiday greetings.

But the Carlyle Group is going back to something slightly more elaborate for its new year greetings: a comedic take on the childhoods of its top executives.

In a short video posted to YouTube on Thursday, the private equity titan’s management - its chairman, Daniel A. D’Aniello, and its co-chief executives, David M. Rubenstein and William E. Conway Jr. - reminisce about the “early starts” to their investment careers.

How exactly did the three spend their childhoods? According to the video, in really nerdy pursuits. Among them:

- A young Mr. Rubenstein ostensibly playing Little League, replete with sport coat and player number “30% I.R.R.” but instead sitting down reading Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball.” (The present-day financier is umpiring the game.)

When a teammate shouts, “Hey, Rubenstein, get your head in the game,” the mogul-in-training responds, “I’m trying to be an owner, not a player!”

- A junior Mr. D’Aniello proposes that his friends play a game of Monopoly, then stuns them with a flurry of wheeling and dealing. “Winner gets to start a private equity firm,” the youngster teases.

- In the present, Mr. Conway, insisting that his co-founders were “quirky” as kids, declares that he was completely normal as a boy. Then his flashback shows him dispensing trading advice, telling one girl to accept an apple for her chocolate bar: “Bridget, take the trade. There’s a drought and apple production is down this year. That thing could be worth its weight in chocolate soon.”

Carlyle being the financial animal it is, portfolio company Dunkin’ Brands gets a plug in as well.

It’s a reprise of a mockumentary the firm made two years ago, when the three billionaires imagined themselves in far more humble circumstances. Like that video, this one was produced by SKDKnickerbocker, a communications firm known for its political advertising offerings.

“One of the great things about our founders is they don’t take themselves too seriously,” Chris Ullman, a Carlyle spokesman and champion whistler, said in a statement. “It sets the tone for the whole firm.”