The three founders of Carlyle, the American private equity group, have come to the rescue of its troubled Dutch-listed subsidiary by providing the bulk of the $200 million emergency loans to help the fund to meet margin calls.

Carlyle said yesterday that it had been forced to pump in an additional $100 million of loans to support Carlyle Capital Corp after the vehicle embarked on a string of asset sales.

The new loan means that Carlyle has provided Carlyle Capital with credit facilities worth $200 million (£99.5 million) in a week.

However, rather than dip into Carlyle’s own coffers, the group’s top management - the high-profile David Rubenstein and his colleagues Daniel D’Aniello and William Conway - chose to stump up the cash themselves.

The three senior partners rushed to the aid of Carlyle Capital after the fund was unable to make margin calls from its banks after the value of its assets - linked to “triple A” rated American mortgages - fell in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States.

“They are really trying to preserve the capital in this fund,” one source close to Carlyle said. “Hopefully, this will insulate it from some of the effects suffered by some competitors.”

Last Tuesday, Carlyle Capital said that it had drawn only $10 million of a $100 million loan provided by the private equity group. Yesterday it said that loan had been fully drawn and Carlyle had made a further $100 million available - for one year, at an interest rate of 7 per cent. Carlyle Group also bought an unspecified amount of debt securities from the fund and released it from a $75 million funding commitment relating to a distressed debt investment fund. It represents the latest setback for Carlyle Capital, whose Amsterdam listing two months ago was scaled back and delayed because of choppy credit markets. At the end of June, Carlyle priced shares at $19 apiece to raise $300 million, having initially sought $415 million from shares sold for $20.

To help to stave off further trouble, Carlyle Capital said that it had sold assets worth about $900 million, including four sets of structured credit products known as collateralised loan obligations. It said that the sales represented less than 5 per cent of its assets, estimated at about $20 billion.

It said that losses on the sales would be $30 million to $40 million, against its posttax profits over the past six months of $33.4 million. Although net interest income would offset some of the losses, it means that Carlyle Capital will fall into the red in the third quarter. The fund said that it was unlikely to pay a dividend.

Its shares slid more than 6.6 per cent to $14, but recovered to close down only 0.3 per cent at $14.95.

The news comes a week after KKR Financial Holdings LLC, an affiliate of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a rival American private equity firm, said that it planned to raise about $500 million through a share sale to address “potential funding disruptions” linked to mortgage bond-related losses. It was the second emergency move that the fund had had to make in as many weeks. If all its efforts failed, KKR Financial said that it could take a charge of up to $200 million.

The Carlyle sales came as John Stomber, the chief executive of the Dutch fund, apologised to investors for a series of communications lapses. He described the credit crunch as worse than the crisis that forced the bailout of Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund, in 1998. Mr Stomber said that, unlike 1998, the market for high-rated mortgage-backed securities issued by the American home loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been “materially affected by recent events”. These securities account for roughly 95 per cent of Carlyle Capital’s portfolio.

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