Henry Kravis Quotes

When investors, particularly investment bankers, talk about splitting up companies, there's a lot of discussion about multiple expansion, and the reality is multiple expansion is an outcome, not a strategy.

When you are buying companies, everyone in the company feels very good. Their chests are puffed out. At Blackstone, I used to tell people that there is nothing more fun than buying a company with somebody else's money. The business is growing, which creates more opportunity for your employees.

It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, 'Is your company for sale?' and if they said 'No, we have no interest in selling,' that was sort of the end of the conversation.

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

I have either run private equity funded companies or been a partner in a private equity fund since 1982. I've had a front row view of the vital role private equity continues to play in building and keeping American businesses competitive in the global economy.

Private-equity and hedge-fund guys typically come into a situation of mediocrity, where rapid change may result in a profit.

People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.

I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners.

VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup.

I buy companies I want to own. I buy companies that make a lot of money, that don't have a lot of debt, and that I can understand.

I come from the operations side of the business, and I buy companies to operate them, not to flip them.

From that moment on, the newspaper became a highly lucrative investment for those with a talent for making money or for publishers wanting to gain a fortune.

Venture capital is always wanting to go up market.

I buy companies for strategic reasons and operate them.

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

As I have seen with a lot of companies I have covered, acquisition interest can be a heady experience, and not always in a good way.

Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead.

If I were to leave and raise a venture fund, I would have to find 10 or 100 LPs. They would all give me a bunch of money, and I would take a percentage of that to pay myself. They would expect me to invest that over the next three years, and they want that money back in seven or eight years.

How do you make money? Spinoffs, split-ups, liquidations, mergers and acquisitions.

Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

The key to making money in angel investing is saying no. You meet with 100 companies and say no to 99 of them.

Any successful company in the valley gets acquisition offers and has to decide whether or not to take them.

I don't invest in companies where my mental model is that they need to get themselves acquired in the next few years - or ever.

I'm a pretty disciplined investor and pretty disciplined buyer. I do my due diligence. I do my homework. I don't waste money.