Pete Stavros, head of KKR’s industrials team.
Private equity firms sometimes get a bad rap, having the stereotype that they only buy into other companies in order to make money and often do so at the expense of existing workers.
But Pete Stavros is determined to change that. Head of KKR’s industrials team investment team and a member of the Investment Committee within KKR’s Private Equity platform in the Americas, he believes that the key to success in the modern world is turning workers into shareholders.
“Treating employees like owners and business partners—that’s how you can create value and make this more than just a feel-good story,” Pete Stavros told Bloomberg.
It was Stavros’ idea to award rank-and-file workers of Gardner Denver equity in the company when it went public, with every worker earning shares equal to about 40 percent of their annual salaries. KKR’s industrials has continued moving in that direction, distributing ownership broadly among employees in Capital Safety, Capsugel, and CHI Overhead Doors.
Pete Stavros believes that this combination of ownership sharing and high-engagement work practices has made their manufacturing businesses much more successful. And it seems to be paying off, helping to move the needle on the value of manufacturing companies where they must do “a million things a little better” to succeed.
“To me, it’s common sense,” says Stavros. “Private equity is all about alignment. You put the right incentives in place and do the broader engagement work to show people you actually care, and the results start to pour out.”
In addition to sitting on the Boards of Capsugel, Gardner Denver, and CHI Overhead Doors he also sits on the board of the Crosby Group. Interestingly, while he has an MBA from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar, his undergraduate degree is in something more technical as he holds a B.S. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from Duke University. As a student he researched employee share-ownership plans, and has a case study on that topic published in the Harvard Business School Case Collection.
Prior to joining KKR, he was involved in the execution of numerous investments in the health care sector as part of GTCR Golder Rauner.
