Korean-American named as one of potential successors to lead KKR

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), one of top American multinational private equity firms, has named Joseph Y. Bae, 45, as one of its two new co-presidents and co-chief operating officers.

Bae’s appointment hit global headlines as he became the first Korean-American who has reached the highest corporate ladder in the global private equity industry.

On Monday, the New York-based asset manager elevated Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall to the roles of co-president and co-chief operating officer and added them to its board. In their new roles they will run KKR’s day-to-day operations.

The appointments solidify the men’s candidacies to the lines of succession of Henry Kravis and George Roberts, the co-founders of the $140 billion buyout group who helped to develop the private equity industry in the 1980s, according to overseas reports including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

“They think and act globally, they embody KKR’s core values, and they are two of our most accomplished business leaders, with proven track records of managing large teams, building new businesses and driving value for our fund investors and our public unit holders,” KKR said in a statement.

Born in 1972 in Korea, Bae grew up in the US with his father who worked as a missionary. Bae graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and began his career at Goldman Sachs.

He briefly considered working as a concert pianist before opting for financial services at Goldman Sachs and then threw himself into the job. He joined KKR in 1996 and went to Hong Kong in 2005 where he built an Asian investing operation that proved a bright spot for the company. In 2013, KKR made inroads into nine Asian countries with $6 billion in assets under management, the largest Asian fund in history that time.

He was credited for successful achievements from his 120 plus Asian managers. One of the fund’s high-profile wins Bae worked on included the $1.8 billion buyout and subsequent sale of Oriental Brewery, Korea’s second-largest beer maker, to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2014, earning the firm more than three times its investment. The Korean deal and the transaction of Panasonic Health in Japan are among the firm’s most profitable anywhere.

KKR last month closed a $9.3 billion fund dedicated to buyouts in the Asia-Pacific region, the largest such investment product focused on the area.

His wife, Janice Lee, an author whom he met when both were undergraduates at Harvard University, spent childhood in Hong Kong and has earned fame for her novel The Piano Teacher. They have four children.

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