The Carlyle Group has secured its first profitable exit from its troubled European early stage technology fund with the trade sale of Egencia, a French online business travel firm, to Interactive Corporation, Barry Diller's ecommerce group that owns Expedia, Hotels.com and Ticketmaster.

Carlyle would not publish financial details of the sale but said the exit generated an internal rate of return of over 30% to investors. While Carlyle has made a number of disposals from its European venture portfolio, the majority of the investments were made during the boom in technology assets have not returned cash to investors.