Now that both Blackstone and KKR have lifted their kimonos for the investing
public, it’s pretty obvious that Blackstone has won the face-off. DealJournal
and the NYT
have handy like-for-like comparison breakdowns, and Blackstone beats KKR on
pretty much every metric bar age – although commenters on the DealJournal
piece are already sniping that the comparisons are not very helpful.
It is clear, however, that KKR is going to raise much less money than Blackstone,
and will almost certainly have a much smaller market capitalization when it’s
done. For Henry Kravis, overshadowed already by the news
that his rival Steve Schwarzman is dropping $26 billion on
Hilton hotels, that’s got to hurt a little.