George R. Roberts is an American financier, billionaire, and one of the three original founding partners of the formidable private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). Alongside his cousin Henry Kravis and their mentor Jerome Kohlberg Jr., Roberts pioneered the leveraged buyout (LBO), an audacious financial maneuver that allows a small group of investors to acquire massive corporations using borrowed money. This strategy transformed the landscape of corporate finance in the 1980s and established KKR as a titan of Wall Street. Roberts is best known for his role in the legendary takeover of RJR Nabisco, a corporate battle so epic it was immortalized in the bestselling book and movie, Barbarians at the Gate. While often seen as a corporate raider, his career offers powerful lessons on unlocking value in underperforming companies, a principle that resonates deeply with value investors.
George Roberts began his career in the late 1960s at the investment bank Bear Stearns, where he, Kravis, and Kohlberg worked together. They specialized in what they called “bootstrap” investments—helping families or founders of private companies cash out by finding a new management team to buy the business. The key innovation was using the target company's own assets as collateral to finance the deal. This was the embryonic form of the LBO. Frustrated by Bear Stearns' reluctance to pursue these deals more aggressively, the trio struck out on their own in 1976, founding KKR with just $120,000 of their own capital. Their vision was simple but revolutionary: apply the bootstrap model to large, publicly traded companies that they believed were undervalued or poorly managed.
The LBO model that KKR perfected was both an art and a science, turning the firm into a corporate acquisition machine.
Imagine you want to buy a $100 million company, but you only have $10 million. In an LBO, you would:
This model was supercharged in the 1980s by the rise of the junk bond market, led by financier Michael Milken, which provided the high-risk, high-reward debt necessary to fund these enormous deals.
In 1988, KKR embarked on the most famous LBO in history: the battle for RJR Nabisco, a sprawling food and tobacco conglomerate. The saga began as a management buyout (MBO) proposal but quickly escalated into a ferocious bidding war. KKR ultimately triumphed with a stunning $25 billion bid, making it the largest takeover of its time. The deal became the ultimate symbol of 1980s Wall Street ambition and perceived greed, cementing the term “Barbarians at the Gate” in the financial lexicon to describe the perceived threat of a hostile takeover by private equity firms.
While the world of high-stakes LBOs may seem distant, George Roberts' approach offers timeless insights for the everyday investor.
George R. Roberts was more than just a financier; he was a corporate architect who reshaped the rules of ownership and control. His career demonstrates that enormous value can be created by challenging the status quo, imposing financial discipline, and making bold, calculated bets on a business's fundamental worth.