KKR'nin "Berkshire Hathaway" stratejisi 17 milyar $ USI satışıyla meyvelerini verdi

KKR's 'Berkshire Hathaway' strategy bears fruit with $17B USI sale

Jessica Hamlin, Rod James

Tue, September 1, 2026 at 1:48 AM GMT+3 2 min read

• BRK-B -0.34%

Dmitry Vinogradov/Getty Images

KKR has made its largest exit from its Strategic Holdings portfolio, representing a significant step towards the firm's ambition of creating a "mini Berkshire Hathaway."

The New York alternatives manager has agreed to sell USI Insurance Services, one of the largest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the US, to Aon for around $17 billion, the firm announced on Monday.

KKR acquired the Valhalla, New York-based business in 2017 for $4.3 billion. It invested more money in 2020, 2023 and 2025, growing the company through over 90 strategic acquisitions. The exit from Aon represents a 6x return on KKR's original equity and a 3.4x return when accounting for those additional investments.

KKR co-CEO Joseph Bae drew the comparison between Strategic Holdings, which comprises stakes in 18 companies, and Warren Buffett's famous holding company in 2025, at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York.

Bae said the portfolio, of which USI was the oldest investment, holds "businesses that we think we could own literally forever" that have the potential to compound at a mid-teens internal rate of return for years.

The firm is targeting over $1.1 billion in operating earnings from the Strategic Holdings strategy by 2030, up from a forecasted $350 million in 2026, according to a presentation accompanying the deal.

Strategic Holdings allows KKR to use its own balance sheet to earn direct investment-like returns, in addition to the management fees and carried interest it already collects from its fund investments in the same businesses.

Investing off the balance sheet could also be seen as more straightforward than making long-term investments with third-party capital, a strategy that still has many detractors.

Commentators such as Sebastien Canderle, writing for the CFA Institute Research & Policy Center, have described long-dated PE funds as a way for PE firms to dodge their obligations to return capital to investors within 10 years, a contractual requirement that has become much harder to meet in recent years.

PitchBook has raised questions about how much value a manager can add to a business over a decade or more, which could encourage long-hold managers to pursue riskier turnaround opportunities. Long holds could also heighten key-person risk.

KKR has raised two Core funds that invest third-party capital in long-hold investments. They've collected a combined $20.3 billion of equity commitments, according to an earnings presentation.

The USI sale is expected to close in Q4 2026. At close, KKR expects to receive after-tax proceeds of about $3.3 billion.

Proceeds from Monday's sale are expected to make up around 40% of Strategic Holdings' earnings for 2026.

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News