Bloomberg- Henry Kravis is taking KKR & Co. public and moving into real estate and stock funds as he tries to catch up with Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private-equity firm.
KKR, co-founded by Kravis in 1976, relied on leveraged buyouts for 95 percent of profit last year, compared with 29 percent for Blackstone.
That has left the New York-based firm more vulnerable to the collapse of the LBO market, where announced deals fell more than 70 percent to $163.1 billion this year through July 25 from the same period in 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
