The New York City-based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co began its operations when Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. bonded with cousins Henry Kravis and George Roberts in 1976. Today, the firm has expanded to include a team of around 400 employees and 140 investments professionals.
More commonly referred to as KKR, the firm manages and sponsors a number of investment funds. With its primary focus fixed on leveraged buyouts of full-grown business establishments and growth capital investments, the firm entered into PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) investments in a number of public companies. Moreover, Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts & Co successfully created a total of nine dedicated investment groups by specializing in private equity investments and focusing on specific sectors in the industry. The firm effectively developed certain specializations in a couple of industries specifically on consumer products, chemicals, energy & natural resources, health care, financial services, industrial, retail, media and communications, as well as technology.
Since the firm’s inception, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co has completed a total of more than $400 billion worth of private equity transactions that includes a number of landmark dealings such as the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in 1989. That particular transaction goes down as the largest buyout in the firm’s history, in addition to the 2007 buyout of TXU. To date, the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co equity firm has completed investments in more than 160 companies ever since 1977.
Aside from its headquarters in the Solow Building at 9 West 57th Street in New York, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co has 11 additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia including Menlo Park, San Francisco, Houston, London, Washington DC, Paris, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Sydney Tokyo, and Dubai.
Henry Kravis and George Roberts continue to run KKR.
