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Co-CEOs need 100% trust
KKR contradicts the business trope that co-CEOs don't work. Henry and George founded the firm with Jerome Kohlberg and ran it as three, and after Kohlberg left, around 1987, the two ran it together. Going around one of them to the other, as in telling George that Henry wouldn't let you do something, was laughable. They talked every day with no air between them, and the firm got the best of both of them at once.
When they moved into co-executive chairman roles, two more co-CEOs took over: Scott Nuttall and Joe Bae. The two have known each other since 1995 and had worked together for 22 or 23 years, maybe longer, before they got the seats. The trust took years to build.
How did KKR's founders know each other?
Henry Kravis and George Roberts are first cousins. Both worked at Bear Stearns, where they worked with Jerome Kohlberg, and the three left in 1976 to found Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The firm became known for the leveraged buyout, which uses borrowed money to purchase companies.
How big was KKR's RJR Nabisco buyout?
In 1988, KKR won a bidding contest for RJR Nabisco at about $25 billion, then the largest leveraged buyout ever. The record stood for about two decades, until buyouts in 2006 and 2007 surpassed it. The contest was chronicled in Barbarians at the Gate, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, published in 1989.
Which other companies have had co-CEOs?
Oracle named Safra Catz and Mark Hurd co-CEOs in 2014. Salesforce had Keith Block as co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff from 2018 to 2020. SAP also had two co-CEOs, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, from 2010 to 2014.
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