"Gentlemen at the Gate": How KKR and Its Peers Must Build Up

For most of this decade, the saga of Gardner Denver, a Milwaukee-based manufacturer of industrial machinery since 1859, has played out like another sequel to Oliver Stone's iconic 1987 movie, Wall Street. Sales from its oil pumps and compressors slumped, its shares on the New York Stock Exchange languished, and in 2012 opportunistic financiers, now in the form of a hedge fund, pounded the table for change. Eventually management was shuffled, Goldman Sachs oversaw a sale, and a giant New York City buyout firm emerged as the winning bidder in 2013, paying some $3.9 billion, including $2.8 billion in new debt. The only thing missing was Michael Douglas insisting that greed was good.