MSN MoneyCentral – Alan Van Noord, a Pennsylvania civil servant with a laid-back demeanour, makes an unlikely business partner for some of the world’s most powerful financiers. Yet, sitting in thespartan state offices, he remembers the day he was too busy to meet Henry Kravis, co-founder of one of the world’s most renowned private-equity firms.
Mr Kravis, a dealmaker worth an estimated $2.5bn (£1.3bn, €2bn) whose sprawling New York home was parodied in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities , had offered to travel to the sleepy reaches of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital. His aim was to persuade the Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) to invest in the ventures of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
“Henry was scheduled to come and it was supposed to be a morning meeting but we had to reschedule,” explains Mr Van Noord, PSERS chief investment officer, his words echoing off the bare walls of a meeting room.
In spite of keeping one of the famous “barbarians” of the financial world outside the gates of Harrisburg, PSERS ended up investing in KKR’s latest fund. But the fact that one of private equity’s founding fathers would even consider trekking to such a backwater underlines a little-noticed, yet fundamental, trend in global financial markets.
