Carlyle Capital

Carlyle Group's troubled mortgage debt investment fund, Carlyle Capital, said Monday that it had asked lenders to halt further liquidation of collateral worth as much as $16 billion while the two sides discussed possible ways to repay debt.

Carlyle Capital, the investment fund linked to the private equity company Carlyle Group, said Friday that it was "considering all available options" after it received further margin calls, prompting some analysts to warn that more funds could struggle to meet increasingly tighter margin requirements.

Carlyle Group isn't accustomed to failure. Over the past 15 years, it has built itself into one of the world's biggest and most successful private-equity funds by seeing value where others didn't. For most of that time, its risks have been carefully calculated, its timing nearly impeccable.