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 nearly half a century in charge of one of the most formidable financial enterprises that Wall Street has ever known.
Companies owned by KKR today employ far more people, in more countries, engaged in more disparate work, even than RJR Nabisco, which KKR bought for $25bn in 1989 on the theory that a sprawling conglomerate that made everything from Camel cigarettes to Ritz crackers would be worth more if it were broken up.
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 midwest.