Roger Altman, founder and chairman of Evercore Partners Inc., said his “expectations are low” that the congressional supercommittee will reach a deal to cut the U.S. budget deficit by the Nov. 23 deadline.

“Every indication I see suggests that they should be low,” Altman, a former U.S. deputy Treasury secretary, said today in a interview with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” “If there was progress being made, big progress, we would see evidence of it.”

The panel of six Democrats and six Republicans is trying to reach an agreement about tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the long-term deficit by $1.5 trillion. Altman said the committee is looking for “any way” to avoid failure to reach a deal, including delaying the deadline.

“They are concerned about the impact of that on a possible additional downgrade and impact on financial markets,” Altman, 65, said. “I don’t think the market impact will be very big because I think that the market expectations also are extremely low.”

Evercore said today it agreed to purchase a 45 percent stake in ABS Investment Management LLC, a hedge fund-of-funds manager, for $45 million. ABS has about $3.5 billion in assets under management with 24 employees in Connecticut, Zurich and Hong Kong, according to a statement from New York-based Evercore.