Is private equity going green?
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, the giant buyout firm, is planning to announce on Thursday a new partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, to help it improve the environmental performance of the dozens of businesses it owns.
Kohlberg Kravis has more than $185 billion of annual revenue and some 825,000 employees worldwide through the companies it operates. Its decision to embrace environmental issues could have far-reaching implications for business operations and might put pressure on its top rivals to follow suit....
...Still, it remains unclear how far Kohlberg Kravis will go in accepting environmental performance costs that affect its profits. Mr. Goltz said he could not predict what would happen if the new yardsticks suggested by Environmental Defense involved a course of action that could hurt the bottom line of one of the firm’s companies.“It’s obviously difficult to answer questions in the abstract,” he said “The object is to create win-wins for our company and improve our environmental performance.”>>>MORE
