Kravis Still Shaking Wall Street Steers Buyout Firm Into Lending

Henry Kravis, the king of rough-and-tumble leveraged buyouts, picked up a phone at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, and called the chief executive officer of one of Spain’s biggest producers of building materials.

It was March 2013, and Uralita SA, reeling from Europe’s credit crisis, had hit a wall. The company faced a loan repayment to five Spanish banks that were reluctant to keep rolling over the debt.