“George and Henry have been great role models and mentors for everyone in the industry,” said Egon Durban, the co-CEO of Silver Lake. So pervasive is KKR’s presence in the financial industry that even its rivals have a stake in its success. Nuttall and Bae, who started at KKR in their 20s, must now convince investors that the firm can prosper in its new incarnation, as a firm less interested in striking home runs than steadily growing its asset base and pushing into new markets. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in a stronger position.” “It’s a broader firm with multiple engines of growth,” said John Waldron, president of Goldman Sachs. Incoming chiefs Scott Nuttall and Joe Bae are not only taking charge of one of the biggest buyout funds on Wall Street, but assuming control of an all-purpose financial institution with a big presence in infrastructure and real estate, which lends billions of dollars to other private equity firms’ deals, and is expanding into insurance.

Inconceivable at the time of that deal – memorialised in Barbarians at the Gate– KKR has grown such that its portfolio companies today employ over 800,000 people, from computer programmers at Epic Games to hospital administrators at Envision Healthcare and machinists at industrial businesses scattered throughout the US midwest.

Henry Kravis, right, and Geroge Roberts pictured in 2007. New York | Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who made their first billions by striking deals that pulverised other people’s corporate empires, stepped down from KKR on Monday after almost half a century in charge of one of the most formidable financial enterprises that Wall Street has ever known.Ĭompanies owned by KKR today employ far more people, in more countries, engaged in more disparate work, even than RJR Nabisco, which KKR bought for $US25 billion in 1989 on the theory that a sprawling conglomerate that made everything from Camel cigarettes to Ritz crackers would be worth more if it was broken up.

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