In response to an SEC examination, private equity firm KKR & Co. has refunded some fees it charged investors in a handful of its funds.
The SEC last year said that some firms were charging investors “hidden fees” without proper disclosure.
From the Wall Street Journal:
KKR’s refunds were disclosed in a pension-fund document obtained by The Wall Street Journal through an open-records request. The precise amount of the refunds couldn’t be determined, but a Journal analysis suggests one set of refunds likely amounted to less than $10 million, while the other may have been similar in size or smaller.
KKR declined to comment on its discussions with regulators.
[…]
According to the notes, KKR officials said the SEC determined that the private-equity firm from 2009 to 2011 had allocated certain expenses to its private-equity funds that “should not have been allocated to the funds.”
As a result, the notes said, KKR gave “fee credits” to the investors in those funds. The sums were blanked out, but the total of such credits was listed as “$X million,” and the credit to the Washington state pension fund was listed as “$X thousand.”
[…]
The SEC staff also found fault with the way KKR handled disclosure of fees it collects from steering portfolio companies into a group-purchasing program run by a company called CoreTrust Purchasing Group, the notes show.
Read the full WSJ story here.
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