KKR heads for summer NYSE listing on July 15

KKR, behind huge acquisitions such as RJR Nabisco and TXU, originally announced plans to list on the NYSE via a traditional initial public offering in July 2007, a month after Blackstone went public and just before the markets started to tumble.

It later followed a more complex route that involved buying its Amsterdam-quoted fund, KKR Private Equity Investors, becoming a Euronext-listed company and then applying to move the listing to New York.

The upcoming listing comes three years after rival Blackstone Group led the path for private equity firms going public. Blackstone's shares are currently trading at about a third of their $31 IPO price.

Hot on KKR's heels will also be the expected listing on the NYSE of Apollo Management LP .

KKR said on Tuesday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared its registration statement effective, and the shares, under the ticker KKR, will start trading on the NYSE at the market opening on July 15.

Shares traded on Euronext will cease trading at the end of the day on July 14.

COMPENSATION REVEALED

KKR earlier on Tuesday updated its NYSE listing filing for the last time with the SEC, giving details of senior executive ownership and pay. Buyout firms have typically kept details such as compensation closely guarded, but such financial disclosures are becoming more common as a number go public.

Co-founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts are each taking a yearly salary of $250,000, according to the filing.

They received a distribution of $22 million last year, mostly made up of their share of KKR's fee income, generated from businesses, including KKR's capital markets, private equity funds and KKR asset management units, the filing said. A small part is carried interest -- the percentage of profit that private equity executives take when their funds perform well.

They were also each awarded a $70 million noncash amount, which represents how KKR accounts for the difference in value between what they owned before KKR became a public company and how it is valued after becoming publicly traded.

The listing process contrasts with Blackstone's IPO. The payout to Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman was up to $677.2 million. Schwarzman, who drew a salary of $350,000 last year, currently owns about 23 percent of Blackstone.

Schwarzman was ranked in March as number 171 on Forbes magazine's world's top billionaires with $4.7 billion, a hair ahead of Kravis at number 201 with $4.2 billion.

Apollo also recently disclosed details of compensation. Founder Leon Black received $787,391 in compensation in 2009, which was made up of $100,000 salary.

Private equity executives typically take the bulk of their pay in carried interest and income from fees rather than salary.

OWNERSHIP STAKES

Kravis and Roberts, who co-founded the firm in 1976 with Jerome Kohlberg Jr., each own 87 million shares of the company, according to the filing, which equates to just under 13 percent each of the total 683 million shares. Kohlberg resigned in 1987 and later started his own buyout firm.

Based on the price of KKR's shares on Euronext at Monday's close, Kravis and Roberts' stakes are worth around $809 million each, or $1.6 billion total. Their percentage ownership in the company, not previously disclosed, will be about the same before and after its NYSE listing.

Kravis' and Roberts' ownership stake has gradually decreased as the company has grown. The company has assets under management of about $55 billion and employs about 600 staff worldwide. Those employees own a significant portion of the company.

KKR as a whole is valued at around $6.4 billion, based on Monday's close in Amsterdam.

KKR said in March when it filed for the NYSE listing that the move would allow it to have a more permanent capital base, use stock to retain and attract staff, and have a currency to use in making acquisitions.

(Reporting by Megan Davies; editing by Matthew Lewis, Steve Orlofsky and Andre Grenon)