Jules B. Kroll (born May 18, 1941) is an American businessman who is executive chair and co-founder of K2 Integrity.
In 1972, he established Kroll, Inc. In 2004, Kroll was sold to Marsh & McLennan Companies for $1.9 billion. In 2009, Kroll founded two successor firms, Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) and K2 Intelligence.
Early life and education
Jules Kroll was born to a
American Jews family
[ New Yorker Magazine: "The Secret Keeper - Jules Kroll and the world of corporate intelligence" By William Finnegan October 19, 2009] on May 18, 1941,
in Bayside,
Queens, the son of Florence Yondorf and Herman Kroll.
Kroll attended Cornell University, where he was a member of Quill and Dagger, and Georgetown University Law Center.
Career
Business
In 1968, he worked for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in Queens before becoming an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan. When his father fell ill, Kroll took a leave of absence to run the family business.
In 1972 he launched J. Kroll Associates, which eventually turned into Kroll, Inc. The business found corruption in companies which used printers with Kroll keeping a percentage of the savings. A deal with Marvel Comics proved so profitable to both sides that Marvel switched to paying a retainer.
Expansion
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 generated new lines of business in auditing and compliance, so Kroll opened offices in Paris, Moscow, São Paulo, Tokyo, Singapore, and Manila. The firm also provided
political risk and executive protection services abroad. Kroll forayed into banking and warehousing and built a reputation for pursuing
financial crime across international borders by tracing and recovering assets. Clients included law firms like Skadden, Arps and
investment banks like Drexel Burnham Lambert (which hired Kroll in 1982 to perform
due diligence on persons and companies that it was
underwriting). It first helped
Nokia and
Motorola find $2.7 billion that had been invested with Turkey's
Cem Uzan. It was also hired to recover wealth that had been plundered by dictators, including the
Philippines'
Ferdinand Marcos and
Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier. In 1991 the government of Kuwait hired it to trace
Saddam Hussein's corporate holdings around the world, including Hachette in France.
K2 Intelligence and Kroll Bond Rating Agency
In June 2008, Kroll left his company and unsuccessfully tried to buy it back from MMC. In 2010 he launched Kroll Bond Rating Agency and K2 Global Consulting with his son Jeremy Kroll. In 2012, K2 Global became K2 Intelligence. Kroll Bond Rating Agency was started with capital from Jeff Keswin, Michael F. Price, Frederick R. Adler, William L. Mack, and James Robinson III; Bessemer Venture Partners,
RRE Ventures, and New Markets Venture Partners also invested $24 million.
K2 Intelligence has offices in New York, London, Madrid, and Bahrain. In 2010, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany engaged K2 Global Consulting to investigate the theft of $42.5 million.
Personal life
He is married to Lynn Korda, who was vice chairwoman of the UJA-Federation of New York.
[ New York Times: "WEDDING; Niccole Siegel, Jeremy Kroll" October 28, 2001][ Jewish Weekly: "UJC hires private detectives to plug leaks on Arafat" by STEVEN ROSENBERG BNovember 19, 1999] They have two sons, Jeremy and actor/comedian
Nick Kroll, and two daughters, Dana Kroll and Vanessa Kroll Bennett.
[ New York Times: "WEDDINGS; Vanessa Kroll, Roger Bennett" October 29, 2000] Vanessa is married to British-American soccer journalist Roger Bennett.
