Long-Term Vision and Approach to Global Expansion

KKR has taken a long-term, strategic approach to investing outside the United States. We began by identifying unique opportunities in Canada and made our first acquisition there, Canadian General Insurance Group, in 1995. Since then we have made three additional investments in Canada - Shoppers Drug Mart, Yellow Pages Group and Masonite - often partnering with a local institution to tap into valuable Canadian-specific market knowledge and expertise. In aggregate, we have invested approximately US$1.2 billion of equity in Canadian transactions.

KKR’s involvement in Europe has been on an even larger scale. After spending years rigorously analyzing the European marketplace, we made our first investment in Europe in 1996. We opened our London office in 1998, and raised our first European fund, with US$3.1 billion of committed capital, in 1999. We opened our Paris office in 2005. Our second European Fund closed in 2005 with total committed capital of €4.5 billion.

We are now entering the Asian market with the same measured approach, assembling a team of highly talented investment and operating professionals with local market knowledge and experience.