When Edward Gilhuly and Scott Stuart left KKR in September 2005, the move surprised some in the private equity world, as the two were seen as heir apparents to Henry Kravis and George Roberts. Both Gilhuly and Stuart joined KKR in 1986, became partners in 1994, and joined the investment committee in 2000. By 2005, with Kravis and Roberts clearly not interested in giving up the reins, Gilhuly and Stuart left to start their own firm.
    Their departure was said to be amicable.
    Thus was born Sageview Partners, with Gilhuly and Stuart raising a $1.35 billion investment fund.
    Where has that money gone?
    A chunk of it will go to the purchase of ACE Aviation Holdings Inc., which agreed on Friday to sell 70 percent of itself to Sageview and…KKR. Sageview teamed up with KKR Private Equity Investors, the publicly traded KKR affiliate based in Amsterdam.
    The deal is Sageview’s first leveraged buyout. 
    Other Sageview investments include retailer Guitar Center of America and Invitrogen Corp., a provider of services to research institutions, pharma, and biotech companies.
    Sageview’s stake in Guitar Center is 8 percent, according to Reuters data, highlighting Sageview’s novel approach of focusing a significant part of their fund on minor, passive stakes and slightly larger, influential stakes. The ACE deal gets Sageview back to the LBO, controlling stake roots of its co-founders.

    As for where they stand with their former employer, clearly the fact that Sageview teamed up with KKR for ACE shows they’re on good terms. And their Website does too, which gives a lot of ink to KKR:

History
Sageview was founded in 2006 by Edward A. Gilhuly and Scott M. Stuart , two former executives of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., L.P. (”KKR”). Founded in 1976, KKR is one of the world’s oldest and most experienced global private equity firms. Messrs. Gilhuly and Stuart were at KKR from 1986 to 2005 and became partners at the end of 1994. Both served on KKR’s five-member investment committee from its inception in 2000 until their departure in 2005. They were involved directly in 28 transactions where $8.9 billion of equity capital was invested and together sat on 34 boards of directors.

    (Image credit: Company website)