SERVICES

HISTORIES Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. almost single-handedly redefined corporate finance, performance standards, and governance on Wall Street in the 1980’s and 1990’s—and became notorious in the process. Media coverage and several high profile books portrayed KKR as modern-day robber-barons. To help set the record straight, KKR engaged Winthrop to study how the firm identified its prospects, structured its deals, and how those acquisitions ultimately performed. The result was The New Financial Capitalists: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Creation of Corporate Value, an objective, independent study illustrating how KKR, by making managers more accountable to owners and shareholders and by re-introducing flexibility in financing, had actually created long-term corporate value. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book is a historical primer on the leveraged buy-out as well as debt, bankruptcy, and other aspects of corporate finance. According to KKR partner Paul Raether, the firm uses it “extensively in terms of marketing ourselves to people who don’t know us”.