Baltimore Orioles owner and billionaire Carlyle Group (CG) co-founder David Rubenstein is hitting the yes button on a salary cap for Major League Baseball. 

"I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don't have that now," Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "I suspect we'll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there's no guarantee of that."

The free-spending Los Angeles Dodgers barreled through the luxury tax this offseason, with a payroll estimated to exceed $370 million. It would top the payrolls of other big spenders in the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies. 

The Baltimore Orioles payroll is in the middle of the pack in MLB at over $150 million for 2025, projected by Fangraphs. Rubenstein — who purchased the team as part of a consortium for $1.725 billion — says he will up the team's payroll and is renovating its home ballpark Camden Yards. However, he says a larger discussion needs to happen to close the gap between big- and small-market teams. 

"I think the big city teams have some advantages. Now, in Los Angeles, they have another advantage. They have Japanese players, [a] number of them that they got like Shohei [Ohtani], and people in Japan really love watching the Dodgers, and they sell a lot of merchandise in Japan for Dodgers players," explained Rubenstein. 

On the business front, Rubenstein is hopeful on the outlook under President Trump.

"I think the business community does generally feel optimistic about what the Trump administration is likely to do. That's not to say that the Biden administration didn't do some things that were very good for business, but clearly this administration is seen by the business community as much more sympathetic, rightly or wrongly," Rubenstein said. 

Enthusiasm over potential Trump policies have some on the Street concerned stocks are overvalued. Unknowns include the end result for Trump's tariff threats and the outlook for Fed policy. 

Stocks are "priced for perfection," warned Goldman Sachs strategist Peter Oppenheimer this month. 

Oppenheimer said the outlook for stocks in the near term is complicated.

"First, the speed of the recent rises in stock prices has reflected much of the good news that we are expecting on growth. Second, high valuations are likely to limit forward returns. Third, unusually high market concentration increases portfolio risks: concentration has increased by geography (the US has been increasingly dominant), by sector (technology has generated the bulk of equity returns), and by stock (the five biggest stocks in the US account for roughly a quarter of the index)," Oppenheimer explained.

Mario Tama via Getty Images

In 1987, Rubenstein co-founded the Carlyle Group alongside William Conway, Stephen Norris, Daniel D’Aniello, and Greg Rosenbaum. Today, the private equity powerhouse boasts more than $447 billion in assets under management across three business segments and 612 investment vehicles.

Read more: What Apollo Global's CEO thinks are big opportunities for Trump

The company has been led by CEO Harvey Schwartz, a Goldman Sachs alum, since February 2023.

Rubenstein, a former aide to President Jimmy Carter, has become a noted philanthropist along the way and has signed the Giving Pledge. President Joe Biden awarded Rubenstein the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this month.

Says Rubenstein on Biden's presidential legacy, "I don't think the president's legacy will be completely seen for quite some time, but I think in time, people think that he had the right ideas about many things, and that he was a very good transition president."

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Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram and on LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com. Three times each week, Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations with the biggest names in business and markets on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast. Find more episodes on our video hub. Watch on your preferred streaming service. Or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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