Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) is to open an office in Dubai, to be operated through a newly-formed subsidiary.
KKR said the office will be located in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and that it was part of a corporate expansion into the region. KKR operates 12 other offices around the world, including five in the US.
Makram Azar, who joined KKR last year as head of its Middle East and North Africa operations, will head up the new office.
Prior to joining KKR, Azar had been with Lehman Brothers for 18 years, most recently as managing director and global head of its sovereign wealth funds operation, based in Dubai. He was also chairman of media investment banking for Europe and the Middle East.
Azar said KKR MENA was looking to take advantage of “a wide variety of attractive opportunities in [the Gulf region]”, and that the company’s executives “look forward to capitalising on KKR’s global resources” in expanding its franchise into the Middle East.
Founded in 1976 in New York, KKR was among the earliest companies active in field of buyouts, and is seen as having helped to create the by-now-ubiquitous LBO model, in which large sums of borrowed money are used to acquire undervalued publicly-traded companies.
It was made famous by its takeover of RJR Nabisco in 1989, which was chronicled in the book Barbarians at the Gate: the fall of RJR Nabisco.
Over the years the firm has set a number of benchmarks in the leveraged buyout/private equity arena, including having arranged the first LBO in excess of $1bn, as well as the largest buyouts to date in the US, the Netherlands, Denmark, India, Australia, Turkey, Singapore and France. A list of these and other deals is on its website.
In recent years KKR has sought to expand its business beyond the private equity arena into more general asset management, hedge funds and other areas.
