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KKR
“The firm that saddled Toys R Us with $5 billion in debt — and wrote the playbook every other PE firm copied.”
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KKR has been buying companies with borrowed money since 1976 — they practically invented it as an industry. Their $25 billion RJR Nabisco takeover was so audacious it became a bestselling book ('Barbarians at the Gate'). The formula: buy a company, load it with debt from the deal itself, then cut costs hard enough to cover the interest payments. Toys R Us is the cautionary tale — $5 billion in deal debt that killed a 70-year-old toy retailer.
Founded 1976 · New York, NY