Private equity giants KKR and The Carlyle Group kept a handful of Am Law 100 firms busy this week with acquisitions totaling nearly $5 billion for an industrial packaging unit owned by Illinois Tool Works, medical device maker Lake Region Medical and optical retailer National Vision.
The deal involving National Vision comes roughly two months after Reuters reported that KKR and Carlyle were competing in an auction to acquire the company, the nation’s fourth-largest eyeglass and contact lens retailer. New York–based KKR, whose profits more than doubled in the fourth quarter of 2013, emerged Friday as the victor in that contest.
