Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


The New Financial Capitalists

The New Financial Capitalists

The New Financial Capitalists

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Creation of Corporate Value
George P. Baker, Harvard University, Massachusetts
George David Smith, New York University
January 1999
Available
Hardback
9780521642606
£40.00
GBP
Hardback

    Kohlberg Kravis Roberts's approach to leveraged buyouts was an important aspect of the corporate restructuring and governance reforms in the American economy from the mid-1970s through 1990. During that period, KKR crafted a series of progressively more elaborate deals tailored to specific companies and market conditions. Through its creative debt financing and its relationships with an evolving cast of investors, companies, and managers, KKR drove the scale and scope of the buyout phenomenon to unprecedented highs. This book, first published in 1999, examines KKR's record in detail. Based upon interviews with partners of the firm and on unprecedented access to KKR's records, George Baker and George Smith have written a balanced and enlightening account of how KKR has approached LBOs. The book focuses on KKR's founding, evolution, and innovations as ways to understand issues in modern American business. In examining KKR as a unique form of enterprise, the book bridges the gap between public perception and academic knowledge of the leveraged buyout.

    • KKR is still a very prominent New York firm
    • Will meet with strong interest from people in finance and business
    • Written for the intelligent lay reader

    Reviews & endorsements

    ' … laudatory study of [KKR] by two business-school professors, one an economist by training the other an historian. From its formation in 1976, the firm of Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis and George Roberts grew to control 59 billion dollars of assets in 35 companies in 1989. (At the same time in American, only GM, Ford, Exxon and IBM were bigger.) In getting there, KKR pioneered a new approach to management that was to revolutionise the American economy.' The Economist

    'Baker and Smith's work is remarkable well documented, provides a clear explanation of the successes and failures of KKR, and successfully sweats its mythically enormous profits down to size, in proportion to the high risk involved.' Contemporary European History

    See more reviews

    Product details

    January 1999
    Hardback
    9780521642606
    272 pages
    240 × 162 × 22 mm
    0.49kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • 1. Context and overview
    • 2. Recasting the role of debt: creative leverage and buyout financing
    • 3. LBO governance and value creation
    • 4. When risk becomes real: managing buyouts in distress
    • 5. KKR as an institutional form: structure, function and character
    • Conclusion.
      Authors
    • George P. Baker , Harvard University, Massachusetts
    • George David Smith , New York University