A New York-based investment management company is planning to expand its business operations and workforce in Dallas.
KKR, formerly known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is a global financial investment firm with more than $60 billion in assets under management.
The company is seeking to expand its Dallas-area footprint a year after opening its more than 10,000-square-foot debt-servicing office in the Sterling Plaza tower at Preston Center.
Now that KKR has laid a solid foundation in the Dallas market, the Wall Street giant plans to tap into the City’s growing workforce of real estate and finance professionals, The Dallas Morning News reported.
“Dallas has a large and attractive pool of talent for real estate and asset management,” Lindsey Wright, KKR’s managing director and head of investment services for real estate credit, told The Dallas Morning News.
Wright said that last year the firm was able to recruit top talent from the DFW area and around the country.
“We are still hiring,” she added, per DMN.
KKR currently employs 29 workers at its debt servicing office in North Dallas but intends to grow its presence and double its employee base by the end of 2023, according to Wright.
The firm’s Preston Center office specializes in various investment management services, including investment property debt servicing, loan asset management, and investment oversight for the company’s real estate credit business.
“Texas, and Dallas, in particular, has been a really important market for us over the last decade,” Chris Lee, partner and head of KKR’s real estate business in the Americas, told The Dallas Morning News. “We feel very strongly about the investment opportunity in the DFW area and will continue to be large investors in the market there.”
To date, KKR has acquired more than $2 billion in local North Texas real estate and has financed around $2 billion in additional real estate loans. Meanwhile, Lee says the firm has more broadly purchased about $4 billion in Texas real estate and made over $5 billion in loans.
Dallas-area real estate purchased by the New York-based investment firm includes an industrial business park in Mesquite and a one-million-square-foot Amazon distribution center in Southern Dallas.
