Bae oversees the firm’s core global buyout business, which includes a big expansion in Asia as well as real estate and infrastructure. Private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co is expected to step up exports to Asia, launch new products and sell and lease back factories after paying more than $3 billion for iconic biscuit maker Arnott's and other Campbell Soup Company operations in the Asia Pacific. ", KKR 'Barbarian at the Gate' banker Cliff Robbins turns into friendly activist. Sales from its oil pumps and compressors slumped, its shares on the New York Stock Exchange languished, and in 2012 opportunistic financiers, now in the form of a hedge fund, pounded the table for change. The pressure is still on us and we control 55pc, so we're responsible. Barbarians at the Gates is a fascinating tale about the rise and fall of food giant Nabisco. The firm’s airy lobby is shared with venture firm Sequoia Capital and decorated with gelatin silver photographic prints by Ansel Adams. That's the moment you have to take accountability to your partners, to outsiders, to yourself," says Murphy. Together, KKR and OSIM’s managing director, Teo Chay Lee, mulled over which stores to keep and improve, and which ones to close or relocate. Roberts adds, “Japan today reminds me of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.”. Students of financial history can now remove their jaws from the floor. KKR operates on a different scale today than it did when it took over RJR. “I would have had a better conversation with a glass, but we got along just fine,” Kravis says. “If you think about what this firm was, it basically was started with three guys and a broom—Jerry, George and me,” Kravis says. "Monetising 45pc of our stake is a pleasing outcome," he says. “PE taught me the importance of finding good, open-minded management teams and the skills to work in partnership with them. V3 today owns 90% of Global Active, now called ONI Global, whose 226 stores in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan last year generated S$16 million in profits on S$174 million in sales. They learned the art of dealmaking from the same mentor—KKR’s third cofounder, Jerome Kohlberg—and have been business partners for 43 years, working in harmony virtually all that time, 2,930 miles apart, high-profile Kravis in New York and low-profile Roberts in San Francisco. By far the biggest innovations at KKR have been structural. Follow me on Twitter at @antoinegara, © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. While newly dual-listed biotech Opthea has spruiked the success of its new Nasdaq listing in The Australian, it's hard to argue Australian investors have yet seen much upside. The creation of an underwriting business has been another fee bonanza. Nuttall is a familiar face to public stockholders and is the driving force behind KKR’s expansion in credit and capital markets. “I’ve been going to Japan since 1978. Robbins doesn’t publicly deride his targeted companies or file lawsuits to force changes and has yet to wage a proxy war for board seats -- all sticks activists typically use when confronting recalcitrant corporations. There are red flowers and a large black-and-white drawing of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol, a lithograph by Jasper Johns and a staircase painted in diagonal blue lines by the contemporary artist Terry Haggerty. When Roberts moved up the ranks at Bear, he recommended Kravis to look at Kohlberg’s buyout invention. An $884 million natural-resources fund, raised in 2010, lost most of its value. Over the past five years it has returned on average just 5% annually, underperforming the S&P 500’s 12% annualized gain. Ross Johnson was head of Nabisco’s rival Standard Brands. “Let’s not delude ourselves,” says John Skjervem, chief investment officer of the $100 billion Oregon State Treasury, a KKR investor since 1981. For KKR, and competitors like Blackstone and Apollo Global, we’ve entered the era of public equity, with PE as the white hats. Pamela Ambler Forbes Staff. He also saw potential in TWG’s cofounder, Frenchman Taha Bouqdib, now its CEO. "Arnott’s has not been sold. The rich stock grants to Bae and Nuttall have caused grumbling inside the firm, when you consider that KKR has since significantly reduced stock compensation to staffers in what may be a maneuver to reduce share dilution and bolster the stock price. Acquired for $6.6 billion in 2005, the retailer wound up filing for bankruptcy in 2017 and shuttering its U.S. stores in 2018. Carl Icahn has rebranded himself as an outspoken shareholder advocate. But KKR has grown to be more powerful than ever, as it spreads its influence around the globe. KKR takes Gardner Denver public in 2017. Since asset ­prices recovered, KKR’s permanent capital has swelled to $14 billion and seeded its fundraising expansion into new sectors like infrastructure, real estate, healthcare and technology. Gardner Denver is a shining example. Over the next 10 years KKR spun off RJR Nabisco's tobacco business into a separate company, renamed the food business Nabisco, and divested dozens of other non-core assets before eventually selling the biscuit business to Philip Morris, which merged it with Kraft Foods and which eventually became Mondelez International. “It took them almost a year to do due diligence,” says Sim in his first one-on-one interview since the deal. Since the days of the corporate raiders of the 80s, shareholder activism has evolved into a formidable asset class, with an estimated $200 billion to invest. But his strategy seems a departure from KKR’s epoch-defining buyout of RJR Nabisco, the $25 billion megadeal chronicled in the book “Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco.”, “We’re a friendly activist, that’s been a key to our success,” said Robbins, referring to the hedge fund he founded in 2004, Blue Harbour Group.