George Rosenberg Roberts (born 1944) is an American financier. He is one of the three original partners of

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strate ...

(KKR), which he co-founded alongside Jerome Kohlberg and first cousin

Henry Kravis Henry R. Kravis (born January 6, 1944) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

, Texas. He graduated from

Culver Military Academy Culver Academies is a college preparatory boarding school located in Culver, Indiana, which is composed of three entities: Culver Military Academy (CMA) for boys, Culver Girls Academy (CGA), and the Culver Summer Schools and Camps (CSSC). Culver ...

in 1962 and received the institution's "Man of the Year" Award in 1998. He attended Claremont McKenna College, graduating in 1966, and the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, graduating in 1969.

Career

Roberts worked for

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The comp ...

in the late 1960s and early 1970s becoming a partner at the age of 29. While at Bear Stearns, Roberts, alongside Kohlberg and Kravis, began a series of what they described as "bootstrap" investments. Their acquisition of Orkin Exterminating Company in 1964 is among the first significant

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...

transactions. In the following years the three Bear Stearns bankers would complete a series of buyouts including Stern Metals (1965), Incom (a division of Rockwood International, 1971), Cobblers Industries (1971), and Boren Clay (1973) as well as Thompson Wire, Eagle Motors and Barrows through their investment in Stern Metals. Although they had a number of highly successful investments, the $27 million investment in Cobblers ended in bankruptcy. By 1976, tensions had built up between Bear Stearns and the trio of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts leading to their departure and the formation of

in that year. Most notably, Bear Stearns executive Cy Lewis had rejected repeated proposals to form a dedicated investment fund within Bear Stearns and Lewis took exception to the amount of time spent on outside activities. Early investors in KKR included Henry Hillman By 1978, with the revision of the ERISA regulations, the nascent KKR was successful in raising the first institutional fund with investor commitments. He has an estimated net worth of $5.9 billion . Much of this wealth came through his position at KKR. In 1989 Roberts and Kravis led one of the most famous

s (LBOs) in the takeover of RJR Nabisco. Roberts' involvement in the RJR Nabisco deal was covered in the book and movie, ''

Barbarians at the Gate ''Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco'' is a 1989 book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of articles written by th ...

''. Roberts was portrayed in the film version by actor Peter Dvorsky. Roberts appeared on the cover of '' Fortune'' magazine at the height of the buyout boom of the 1980s alongside his cousin and partner,

Henry Kravis Henry R. Kravis (born January 6, 1944) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.San Mateo, California). She died in 2003. The couple had three children, Eric, Mark and Courtney. On May 22, 2010, he married Goldman Sachs partner Linnea Conrad.

Philanthropic and public positions

Roberts is the founder and chairman of the boards of directors of non-profit organizations such as the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF), which focuses on job creation. He also serves as a trustee of Claremont McKenna College and

, and is a board member of San Francisco Symphony,

San Francisco Ballet San Francisco Ballet is the oldest ballet company in the United States, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet under the leadership of ballet master Adolph Bolm. The company is currently based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Fra ...

, and the Fine Arts Museum. In 2012, he donated $50 million to Claremont McKenna College. He again donated $140 million to CMC in 2022.

Awards and honors

*Culver Military Academy’s Man of the Year Award *Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

, 1988 *Claremont McKenna College named a new athletic facility after him, the Roberts Pavilion, 2012

References

External links

Roberts winning 'Man of the Year' award
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, George R. 1944 births Living people 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American billionaires American financiers American investors Bear Stearns people Businesspeople from California Businesspeople from Houston Claremont McKenna College alumni Culver Academies alumni Jewish American philanthropists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts People from Atherton, California Private equity and venture capital investors University of California, Hastings College of the Law alumni 21st-century American Jews