Founding and early history While running the corporate finance department for
Bear Stearns in the 1960s and 1970s,
Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., and later
Henry Kravis and
George R. Roberts, completed a series of what they described as "bootstrap" investments. They targeted family-owned businesses, many of which had been founded in the years following
World War II, that were facing succession issues. Many of these companies lacked a viable exit for their founders because they were too small to be taken public and the founders were reluctant to sell out to competitors. In 1964, Lewis Cullman made what some people call the first significant
leveraged buyout transaction, acquiring and then selling
Orkin. In the following years the three Bear Stearns bankers completed a series of buyouts including Stern Metals (1965), Incom (a division of Rockwood International, 1971), Cobblers Industries ($27 million, 1971), and Boren Clay (1973), as well as Thompson Wire, Eagle Motors and Barrows through their investment in Stern Metals. By 1976, tensions had built up between Bear Stearns and the three: most notably, executive
Cy Lewis had rejected repeated proposals to form a dedicated in-house investment fund. This led them to form their own firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The name had been planned to be Kohlberg Roberts Kravis, but public relations advisors preferred the sound of KKR. The new KKR completed its first buyout, of manufacturer A.J. Industries, in 1976. KKR raised capital from a small group of investors including the
Hillman Company and
First Chicago Bank. By 1978, with the revision of the
ERISA regulations, KKR was successful in raising its first institutional fund with over $30 million of investor commitments. In 1981, KKR expanded its investor base after the
Oregon State Treasury's public pension fund invested in KKR's acquisition of retailer
Fred Meyer, Inc. based in Portland. Oregon State remains an active investor in KKR funds. In 1979, KKR completed a risky, precedent-setting $380 million public-to-private leveraged buyout of
Houdaille Industries, a well-known producer of machine tools, industrial pipes, chrome-plated
car bumpers and torsional viscous dampers. It soon ended in a spectacular failure, breakup of the half-century-old company, and the loss of thousands of jobs, even though creditors earned a profit. The firm's acquisitions during the
1980s buyout boom include:
Buyout of RJR Nabisco At age 61, Kohlberg resigned in 1987. He later founded his own private equity firm,
Kohlberg & Co.. Henry Kravis succeeded him as senior partner. Under Kravis and Roberts, the firm was responsible for the 1988
leveraged buyout of
RJR Nabisco. RJR Nabisco was the largest buyout in history at that time, at $25 billion, and remained the largest for 17 years. The deal was chronicled in
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and later made into a television movie starring
James Garner. In 1988,
F. Ross Johnson was the president and CEO of
RJR Nabisco, a leading producer of food and tobacco products, formed in 1985 by the merger of
Nabisco Brands and
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. In October 1988, Johnson proposed a $17 billion ($75 per share)
management buyout of the company with the financial backing of investment bank
Shearson Lehman Hutton and its parent company,
American Express. Several days later, Kravis, who had originally suggested the buyout to Johnson, presented a new bid for $20.3 billion ($90 per share) financed with Kravis' own aggressive debt package. KKR had the support of
equity co-investments from
pension funds and other
institutional investors, including
Coca-Cola,
Georgia-Pacific and
United Technologies corporate pension funds, as well as endowments from
MIT,
Harvard and the
New York State Common Retirement Fund. However, KKR faced criticism from existing investors over the firm's use of a
hostile takeover in the buyout of RJR. KKR proposed to provide a joint offer with Johnson and
Shearson Lehman but was rebuffed and Johnson attempted to stonewall KKR's access to financial information from RJR. Rival private equity firm
Forstmann Little & Co. was invited into the process by
Shearson Lehman, and attempted to provide a bid for RJR with a consortium of
Goldman Sachs Alternatives,
Procter & Gamble,
Ralston Purina and
Castle & Cooke. Ultimately, the Forstmann consortium came apart and did not provide a final bid for RJR. In November 1988, RJR set guidelines for a final bid submission at the end of the month. The management and Shearson group submitted a final bid of $112, a figure they felt certain would enable them to outflank any response by Kravis and KKR. KKR's final bid of $109, while a lower dollar figure, was ultimately accepted by the board of directors of RJR Nabisco. KKR's offer was guaranteed, whereas the management offer lacked a "reset", meaning that the final share price might have been lower than their stated $112 per share. Additionally, many in RJR's board of directors were concerned about disclosures of Ross Johnson's unprecedented golden parachute deal.
Time magazine featured Johnson on the cover of its December 5, 1988 issue along with the headline, "A Game of Greed: This man could pocket $100 million from the largest corporate takeover in history. Has the buyout craze gone too far?". KKR's offer was welcomed by the board, and, to some observers, it appeared that the elevation of the reset issue as a deal-breaker in KKR's favor was little more than an excuse to reject Johnson's higher bid of $112 per share. Johnson received $53 million from the buyout. KKR collected a $75 million fee in the RJR takeover. At $31.1 billion of а transaction value including assumed debt, RJR Nabisco was, at the time, by far the largest leveraged buyout in history.
Early 1990s: The aftermath of RJR Nabisco The buyout of RJR Nabisco was completed in April 1989 and KKR spent the early 1990s repaying the debt load through asset sales and restructuring transactions. KKR did not complete a single investment in 1990, the first such year since 1982. KKR began to focus primarily on its existing portfolio companies acquired during the buyout boom of the late 1980s. Six of KKR's portfolio companies completed IPOs in 1991, including RJR Nabisco and
Duracell. In January 1990, KKR completed the sale of RJR's
Del Monte Foods to a group led by
Merrill Lynch. KKR had originally identified a group of divisions that it could sell to reduce debt. KKR contributed $1.7 billion of new equity into RJR in July 1990 to complete a restructuring of the company's balance sheet. In December 1990, RJR announced an
exchange offer to swap debt in RJR for a new
public stock in the company, effectively an unusual means of an
initial public offering and simultaneously reducing debt on the company. RJR issued additional stock to the public in March 1991 to reduce debt further, resulting in an upgrade of the
credit rating of RJR's debt from
junk to
investment grade. KKR began to reduce its ownership in RJR in 1994, when its stock in RJR was used as part of the consideration for its leveraged buyout of
Borden, a producer of food and beverage products, consumer products, and industrial products. In 1995, KKR divested itself of its final stake in RJR Nabisco when Borden sold a $638 million block of stock. While KKR no longer had any ownership of RJR Nabisco by 1995, its original investment was not be fully realized until KKR exited its last investment in 2004. After sixteen years of efforts, including contributing new equity, an IPO, asset sales, and exchanging shares of RJR for the ownership of
Borden, KKR finally sold the last remnants of its 1989 investment. In July 2004, KKR agreed to sell its stock in
Borden Chemical to
Apollo Management for $1.2 billion.
Early 1990s: Investments In the early 1990s, the absence of an active high yield market prompted KKR to change its tactics, avoiding large leveraged buyouts in favor of industry consolidations through what was described as
leveraged buildups or
rollups. One of KKR's largest investments in the 1990s was the
leveraged buildup of Primedia (now
Rent Group) in partnership with former executives of
Macmillan Publishing, which KKR had failed to acquire in 1988. KKR created K-III Communications (now
Rent Group), a platform to buy media properties, initially completing the $310 million
divisional buyout of the book club division of
Macmillan along with the assets of Intertec Publishing Corporation in May 1989. During the early 1990s, K-III continued acquiring publishing assets, including a $650 million acquisition from
News Corporation in 1991. K-III went public, however instead of cashing out, KKR continued to make new investments in the company in 1998, 2000 and 2001 to support acquisition activity. In 2005, Primedia redeemed KKR's
preferred stock in the company but KKR was estimated to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on its
common stock holdings as the price of the company's stock collapsed. In January 1996, KKR exchanged its investment for a 7.5% interest in
Fleet Bank. In 1992, KKR completed the buyout of
American Re Corporation from
Aetna as well as a 47% interest in
TW Corporation, later known as
The Flagstar Companies and owner of
Denny's. Among the other notable investments KKR completed in the early 1990s included
World Color Press (1993–95),
RELTEC Corporation (1995) and
Bruno's (1995).
1996–1999 By the mid-1990s, the debt markets were improving and KKR had moved on from the RJR Nabisco buyout. In 1996, KKR was able to complete the bulk of fundraising for what was then a record $6 billion private equity fund, the KKR 1996 Fund. However, KKR was still burdened by the performance of the RJR investment and repeated obituaries in the media. KKR was required by its investors to reduce the fees it charged and to calculate its
carried interest based on the total profit of the fund (i.e., offsetting losses from failed deals against the profits from successful deals).
Newsquest in January 1996,
KinderCare Learning Centers in October 1996,
Amphenol Corporation in January 1997,
Randalls Food Markets in June 1997,
MedCath Corporation in March 1998,
The Boyds Collection in April 1998,
Willis Group Holdings in July 1998, and
Wincor Nixdorf in October 1999. KKR's largest investment of the 1990s was one of its least successful. In January 1998, KKR and
Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst agreed to the $1.5 billion buyouts of
Regal Entertainment Group. KKR and Hicks Muse had initially intended to combine Regal with
Act III Cinemas, which KKR had acquired in 1997 for $706 million and
United Artists Theaters, which Hicks Muse had agreed to acquire for $840 million in November 1997. Shortly after agreeing to the Regal takeover, the deal with United Artists fell apart and the company was not able to scale up. In 2000, Regal encountered significant financial issues and filed bankruptcy protection and was acquired by
Philip Anschutz.
2000–2005 Losses on such investments as
Regal Entertainment Group,
Spalding,
Flagstar and K-III Communications (now
Rent Group) were offset by successes in Willis Group,
Wise Foods, Inc.,
Wincor Nixdorf and
MTU Aero Engines, among others. KKR was able to realize its investment in
Shoppers Drug Mart through a 2002 IPO and subsequent public stock offerings. In November 2002, KKR acquired Bell Canada Yellow Pages. In May 2004, directories business was sold in an
initial public offering as
Yellow Pages Income Fund, a Canadian
income trust. in 2004. In 2004, in a
club deal and one of the largest buyouts in years, KKR,
Bain Capital and
Vornado Realty Trust acquired
Toys "R" Us for $6.6 billion after outbidding
Cerberus Capital Management, which offered $5.5 billion. In 2005, KKR partnered with
Silver Lake Partners,
Bain Capital,
Goldman Sachs Alternatives,
Blackstone,
Providence Equity Partners, and
TPG Capital to acquire
SunGard for $11.3 billion. This represented the largest leveraged buyout completed since the takeover of
RJR Nabisco in 1988. SunGard was the largest buyout of a technology company until the buyout of
Freescale Semiconductor by affiliates of
Blackstone. The SunGard transaction was notable given the number of firms involved in the transaction, the largest
club deal completed to that point. The involvement of seven firms in the consortium was criticized by investors in private equity who considered cross-holdings among firms to be generally unattractive.
Buyout boom (2006–2007) In 2006, KKR raised $17.6 billion for the KKR 2006 Fund, with which the firm began executing a series of some of the largest buyouts in history. KKR's $44 billion takeover of Texas-based power utility
TXU Energy in 2007 was the largest leveraged buyout of
private equity in the 21st century and the largest buyout completed to date. Among the most notable companies acquired by KKR in 2006 and 2007 were the following: KKR acquired a 40% stake in
Longview Power Plant in 2006; it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020. In October 2006, KKR acquired a 50% stake in Tarkett, a France-based distributor of flooring products, in a deal valued at about €1.4 billion ($1.8 billion). In November 2006, KKR formed a A$4 billion partnership with the
Seven Network of Australia. In January 2007, KKR invested $700 million through a
private investment in public equity in
Sun Microsystems. In January 2008, KKR made a $1.25 billion
private investment in public equity in
Legg Mason through a
convertible preferred stock offering. On April 26, 2007,
Harman International Industries entered an agreement to be acquired by KKR and
Goldman Sachs Alternatives for $8 billion. However, in September 2007, the agreement was terminated after a drop in earnings at Harmon during the
Great Recession.
Initial public offering (2007) In 2007, KKR filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $1.25 billion by selling an ownership interest in its management company. The filing came less than two weeks after the
initial public offering of rival private equity firm
Blackstone Inc. KKR had previously listed its KPE vehicle in 2006, but for the first time, KKR offered investors an ownership interest in the
private equity firm itself. The onset of the credit crunch and the weak IPO market dampened the prospects of obtaining a valuation attractive to KKR. The flotation was repeatedly postponed and called off by the end of August. In July 2008, KKR announced a
reverse takeover of its listed affiliate
KKR Private Equity Investors in exchange for a 21% interest in the firm to become a
public company. In November 2008, the transaction was delayed until 2009. Shares of KPE had declined significantly in the second half of 2008 due to the
2008 financial crisis. In October 2009, KKR listed shares in KKR & Co. on the
Euronext exchange. In March 2010, KKR filed to list its shares on the
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Trading commenced on July 15, 2010.
2010–2019 In December 2011, Samson Investment Company was acquired by a group of private equity investors led by KKR for approximately $7.2 billion and Samson Resources Corporation was formed. With the severe downturn in oil and natural gas prices, in September 2015, Samson filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and during its bankruptcy process, sold several large assets. In March 2013, a year after making her first retail real-estate investment in
Illinois'
Yorktown Center, it sold its 51% stake in
BMG Rights Management to
Bertelsmann. In January 2014, KKR acquired Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc for $2.4 billion from two private equity companies - Stone Point, and
Hellman & Friedman. In June 2014, KKR acquired a one-third stake in Spanish energy business
Acciona Energy, at a cost of €417 million ($567 million). The international renewable energy generation business operates renewable assets, largely
wind farms, across 14 countries including the
United States,
Italy and
South Africa. In August, KKR invested $400 million for 18% of Fujian Sunner Development, China's largest chicken farmer, which breeds, processes and supplies frozen and fresh chickens to consumers and corporate clients, such as KFC and McDonald's, across China. In September, the firm invested $90 million in lighting and electrics firm
Savant Systems. Also in 2014, KKR acquired commercial landscaping company ValleyCrest from
Michael Dell's investment firm
MSD Capital, and combined it with landscape company Brickman, which it had owned since 2013, to form BrightView. The following year, in addition to acquiring Exponent's British rail ticket website
Trainline, KKR bought a majority stake in Selecta Group, a European vending services operator, from Allianz Capital Partners. In 2016, KKR purchased two Hispanic grocery chains,
Northern California Mi Pueblo and
Ontario, California–based Cardenas. In February, seven months before acquiring US software company
Epicor, KKR invested $75 million in commercial real estate lender A10 Capital. In October, it invested $250 million in OVH to be used for further international expansion; this funding round valued
OVH at over $1 billion, making it a
unicorn. In December, the firm sold
Capsugel for $5.5 billion to the
Lonza Group. In March 2017, KKR partnered with a fund linked to
Dell to acquire
GfK. In August, a month after acquiring
WebMD for $2.8 billion KKR acquired
PharMerica for $1.4 billion including debt,
Pepper Group Limited for $518 million, Covenant Surgical Partners, and Envision Healthcare Corporation's ambulance business (
American Medical Response) for $2.4 billion. In September, two months after KKR merged Mi Pueblo and Cardenas Market, Toys "R" Us, Inc. filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating the move would give it flexibility to deal with $5 billion in long-term debt, borrow $2 billion so it would be able to pay suppliers for the upcoming holiday season and invest in improving current operations. During 2017, KKR purchased an 80% stake in Dixon Hospitality Group for , renaming it Australian Venue Co. (AVC); it was expanded and then sold for US$900 million in 2023. In July 2018, while acquiring
RBMedia, one of the largest independent publishers and distributors of
audiobooks and Taipei-based LCY Chemical for NT$47.8 billion ($1.56 billion US), the company sold Gallagher Shopping Park in the
West Midlands to
Hana Financial Group for £175 million. In February 2019, KKR acquired Brightsprings, and in a 2022 letter from four U.S. senators including
Elizabeth Warren and
Bernie Sanders,
Joseph Bae and Scott Nutall were asked to explain the substandard care since the acquisition. In the same month, it acquired
Tele München Gruppe and the German film distributor Universum Film GmbH. In April, three months before buying
Corel, it acquired German film production company
Wiedemann & Berg Film Production. In August, KKR acquired
Arnott's Biscuits, the Australian snack unit of
Campbell Soup Company, for $2.2 billion. Also in August, KKR became the biggest shareholder of German media group
Axel Springer SE, paying $3.2 billion for a 43.54% stake. Later that month, the firm also acquired a majority stake in Heidelpay from
AnaCap Financial Partners for more than €600 million. In December, KKR, together with
Alberta Investment Management Corporation, acquired a 65% stake in the controversial
Coastal GasLink Pipeline project from
TC Energy.
2020–2024 In May 2020, two months after acquiring
Viridor for £4.2 billion, the company invested $750 million in cosmetics producer
Coty and $1.5 billion in
Jio Platforms. In June, it acquired it purchased
OverDrive, Inc., a major
e-book distributor for libraries that merged with its subsidiary
RBMedia. In June, when it led a $48 million funding round for Artlist, a provider of
royalty-free music, sound effects and video, KKR acquired Roompot Group, a provider of holiday parks in Europe, from French private equity firm PAI Partners for approximately €1 billion. In August, a group primary represented by private-equity firm
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice acquired
Epicor for $4.7 billion. In November, two months after investing $755 million in
Reliance Industries' retail arm, it partnered with
Rakuten to acquire 85% of
Seiyu Group, the Japanese nationwide retail chain owned by
Walmart. In January 2021, KKR acquired a majority stake in the catalogue of American musician
Ryan Tedder, including his band
OneRepublic and the songs that he composed for other artists since 2016. In November 2021, in addition to selling Audiobooks.com to streaming company Storytel for $135 million, KKR partnered with
Global Infrastructure Partners to acquire
CyrusOne for $15 billion. In February 2022, the firm acquired 8.5% of
Nexon. In May 2022, after acquiring Mitsubishi UBS Realty, a Japanese real estate asset manager, it led about $200 million investment round in Semperis, a cybersecurity company focused on identity protection. In June, when it sold
Cardenas to funds affiliated with
Apollo Global Management, the company rose to the top of
Private Equity International's PEI 300 ranking for the first time, replacing
Blackstone Inc. as the largest private equity firm in the world. KKR slipped back to second place in 2023 and 2024, before regaining top spot in the 2025 list. In July, a month before acquiring
Barracuda Networks, the firm purchased a 25% stake in
Northumbrian Water Group, a UK water utility company, for approximately £870 million. In October, KKR acquired
ISO tank services provider
Boasso Global from
Apax Partners. In April 2023, it acquired a 30% stake in
FGS Global that valued the company at about $1.4 billion. In August, KKR sold its controlling stakes in
Australian Venue Co. to
PAG for about . In October, KKR acquired
Simon & Schuster, a
Big Five publisher, for $1.6 billion; Simon & Schuster employees received
employee stock ownership in the company on completion of the acquisition. In the same month, it secured a minority stake in Catalio Capital Management, a firm specializing in the management of
venture capital and medical investment funds. In November 2023, KKR acquired Potter Global Technologies from Gryphon Investors. In January 2023, KKR invested 700 billion won in 2023 after the first purchase of 400 billion won in private equity bonds by Taeyoung Group holding company TY Holdings. In February 2024, KKR acquired the End-User Computing (EUC) division of
VMware, which had been acquired by
Broadcom, in a deal worth $3.8 billion. The division, renamed
Omnissa, includes the VDI product
Omnissa Horizon and the device management suite
Workspace ONE UEM (formerly
AirWatch). In April, KKR acquired Indian company Healthium MedTech in an $839 million deal. In June, KKR retained second spot in
Private Equity International's 2024 PEI 300 ranking, behind
Blackstone Inc. In the same month, it acquired
Superstruct Entertainment, owner of European music festivals including
Wacken Open Air (Germany),
Boardmasters (UK) and
Zwarte Cross (The Netherlands) for approximately €1.3 billion. In July, KKR acquired a majority stake in the US-based
solar energy and
energy storage developer
Avantus. In November,
CVC Capital Partners,
TF1,
RedBird Capital Partners,
All3Media,
Mediawan and KKR considered bidding for
ITV plc and then selling
ITV Studios and
ITVX. Also in 2024 the Hamburg-based asset manager of renewable energies Encavis AG was acquired (currently up to 91%) by KKR along with Viessmann and ABACON CAPITAL as co-investors.
2025–present In February 2025, a month after acquiring Dawsongroup, British healthcare property developer
Assura rejected a $2 billion takeover bid from KKR and
Universities Superannuation Scheme. That same month, in addition to purchasing 54% of Healthcare Global Enterprises for $400 million, it acquired
Fuji Soft via a tender offer, after a bidding war with
Bain Capital. In March 2025,
Darwinbox raised $140 million by
Partners Group and KKR & Co. to accelerate global expansion. In March, Japanese manufacturer of optical equipment,
Topcon, agreed to be taken private through a management buyout led by KKR, which acquired a majority stake for approximately (US$1.7 billion) alongside investments from
Japan Investment Corporation and Topcon's management, valuing the company at (US$2.3 billion). In April, in addition to buying Datagroup for around $500 million, it agreed to acquire Assura for £1.6 billion in partnership with
Stonepeak. In addition, it agreed to purchase for $3.1 billion a joint venture of
S&P Global and
CME Group called OSTTRA, responsible for providing services across interest rate, foreign exchange, equity and credit markets. On June 3, it backed out of a deal five months after submitting a £4 billion equity bid to acquire a majority stake in
Thames Water. In July, when it acquired ProTein, it said it teamed up with
T-Mobile US to buy the fiber internet company Metronet, with the two buyers each paying $4.9 billion. In July 2025, KKR outbid
Advent International to acquire British supplier of precision instrumentation and controls,
Spectris, for £4.7 billion ($6.46 billion) including debt. In January 2026, KKR acquired sports-focused private equity firm
Arctos Partners. The firm holds stakes in teams across major U.S. leagues, including the National Basketball Association (
NBA), Major League Baseball (
MLB), National Hockey League (
NHL) and Major League Soccer (
MLS), and was valued at about $1.4 billion. In February 2026, the firm led the acquisition of Singapore-based
ST Telemedia's data center assets for roughly $10 billion USD. The deal was in partnership with
Singtel, a Singaporean telecommunications company. With this, KKR will hold a 75% stake in STT GDC, while Singtel will own the remaining 25%. That same month, KKR lost their shares of the, in 2022 acquired,
Accell group after a refinancing agreement transferred the shareholding to super senior lenders. Also in February, KKR was one of several firms looking toward investment opportunities in Indian cricket league IPL (
Indian Premier League), the world's richest cricket league, according to Reuters. In March 2026, it was announced that KKR had struck a $2 billion deal to acquire bakery chain Nothing Bundt Cakes from
Roark Capital. In April 2026, KKR announced it raised about $23 billion for its most recent Americas buyout fund. ==Management==