[2]: 167 KKR was founded in 1976 by Jerome Kohlberg Jr., and cousins Henry Kravis and George R. Roberts, all of whom had previously worked together at Bear Stearns, where they completed some of the earliest leveraged buyout transactions.

In March 2010, KKR filed to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE),[5] with trading commencing four months later, on July 15, 2010.

[6] KKR is headquartered at 30 Hudson Yards, Manhattan, New York, with offices in Beijing, Dubai, Dublin, Houston, Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Menlo Park, Mumbai, Paris, Riyadh, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo.

[8] While running the corporate finance department for Bear Stearns in the 1960s and 1970s, Jerome Kohlberg, and later Henry Kravis and George Roberts, completed a series of what they described as "bootstrap" investments.

[35][36] Several days later, Kravis, who had originally suggested the idea of the buyout to Johnson, presented a new bid for $20.3 billion ($90 per share) financed with an aggressive debt package.

[42][43][44][45] Rival private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. was invited into the process by Shearson Lehman but attempted to provide a bid for RJR with a consortium of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Procter & Gamble, Ralston Purina and Castle & Cooke.

[48] The management and Shearson group submitted a final bid of $112, a figure they felt certain would enable them to outflank any response by Kravis and KKR.

[50] Additionally, many in RJR's board of directors had grown concerned at recent disclosures of Ross Johnson's unprecedented golden parachute deal.

[51][52] Time magazine featured Johnson on the cover of their December 1988 issue along with the headline, "A Game of Greed: This man could pocket $100 million from the largest corporate takeover in history.

[55] At $31.1 billion of а transaction value (including assumed debt), RJR Nabisco was, at the time, by far the largest leveraged buyout in history.

[61] Over the coming years, RJR would pursue a number of additional restructurings, equity injections, and public offerings of stock to provide the company with added financial flexibility.

[71] KKR created Primedia's predecessor, K-III Communications,[72] a platform to buy media properties, initially completing the $310 million divisional buyout of the book club division of Macmillan along with the assets of Intertec Publishing Corporation in May 1989.

Shortly after agreeing to the Regal takeover, the deal with United Artists fell apart, destroying the strategy to eliminate costs by building a larger combined company.

[97] Two years later, in 2000, Regal encountered significant financial issues and was forced to file for bankruptcy protection; the company passed to billionaire investor Philip Anschutz.

Several large and storied firms, including Hicks Muse Tate & Furst and Forstmann Little & Company were dragged down by heavy losses in the bursting of the telecom bubble.

[60] Additionally, KKR was one of the few firms that were able to complete large leveraged buyout transactions in the years immediately following the collapse of the Internet bubble, including Shoppers Drug Mart and Bell Canada Yellow Pages.

[133] In March 2013, KKR exited its joint venture in music company BMG Rights Management, selling its 51% stake to Bertelsmann.

[134] In January 2014, KKR acquired Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc for $2.4 billion from two private equity companies - Stone Point, and Hellman & Friedman.

[141] On October 12, 2015, KKR announced that it had entered into definitive agreement with Allianz Capital Partners to acquire their majority stake in Selecta Group, a European vending services operator.

[159] In July 2018, it was announced that KKR sold Gallagher Shopping Park, West Midlands in the UK to South Korean investors, Hana for £175 million.

[160] In February 2019, KKR acquired Brightsprings, and in a May 2022 letter from four United States Senators, Joe Bae and Scott Nutall were asked to explain the substandard care since their acquisition.

[166] In August 2019, KKR also acquired a majority stake in German payment service provider to the e-commerce industry Heidelpay from AnaCap Financial Partners for more than €600 million.

[167][168] In December 2019, KKR, together with Alberta Investment Management Corporation, acquired a 65% stake in the controversial Coastal GasLink Pipeline project from TC Energy.

[175] In late June 2020, KKR announced it would lead a $48 million funding round for Artlist, a provider of royalty-free music, sound effects and video.

On August 31, it was officially confirmed that a group primary represented by private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice is set to buy the branch in a deal worth $4.7 billion.

[180] In January 2021, KKR acquired a majority stake in the catalogue of American musician Ryan Tedder, including his band OneRepublic and the songs that he composed for other artists since 2016.

[197][198] In August 2023, KKR agreed to buy Simon & Schuster, a Big Five publisher, from Paramount Global in an all-cash deal worth $1.6 billion.

[205] On 26 February 2024 KKR announced that it would purchase the End-User Computing (EUC) arm of VMware, which had recently been acquired by Broadcom, in a deal worth $3.8bn.

[211] On 19 December 2024, KKR extended its tender offer period for Fuji Soft to Jan. 9. as it battles rival U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital for control of the Japanese software maker.

[218] Among those who left were Saul Fox, Ted Ammon, Ned Gilhuly, Mike Tokarz and Scott Stuart who had been instrumental in establishing KKR's reputation and track record in the 1980s.