Henry Kravis Businessman Quotations

My next summer I worked in the research department of Goldman Sachs, and my last summer I was in institutional sales and corporate finance.

Our job really begins the day we buy the company, and we start working with the management, we start working with where this company is headed.

Since we formed the firm in 1976, we've bought some 38 different companies, and we spent about $65 billion, buying these different companies.

My father wanted me to go into the oil business. He was in the oil and gas business as a consulting petroleum engineer up in Tulsa.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.

So I picked a field where I had a little exposure. Where I thought I could have an enormous challenge, and have a chance to really do some good, to be a pioneer in an area, and not just be like everyone else.

Look, don't congratulate us when we buy a company, congratulate us when we sell it. Because any fool can overpay and buy a company, as long as money will last to buy it.

In hindsight, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's been just a phenomenal career for me so far, and I don't see any reason why I should change.

Maybe its because my father was so successful in a totally different field, but I found working in a small environment just a great joy.