Jules Kroll

Jules B. Kroll (born May 18, 1941) is an American businessman credited with creating the corporate investigations industry. He is executive chair and co-founder of K2 Intelligence (now K2 Integrity), chair of Kroll Bond Rating Agency, Inc., and a member of the board of directors of BlueVoyant.

In 1972, he established Kroll, Inc., the first professional services firm specializing in mitigating risk. 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. ^[1] K2 Intelligence—co-founded with Kroll’s son Jeremy Kroll, who as CEO—continues the family’s work in asset recovery, due diligence, litigation support, and a range of corporate investigations along with financial crime compliance advisory services.

Jules Kroll was born to a Jewish family^[2] on May 18, 1941,^[3] in Bayside, Queens, the son of Florence Yondorf and Herman Kroll.^[4] His father ran a printing business that was subject to graft and demands for kickbacks from purchasing agents.^{[citation needed]} Kroll attended Cornell University, where he was a member of Quill and Dagger, and Georgetown University Law Center.^[5]

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.^[6]

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.

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.^[7][8]

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.^[9]

He is married to Lynn Korda, who was vice chairwoman of the UJA-Federation of New York.^[10][11] They have two sons, Jeremy and actor/comedian Nick Kroll, and two daughters, Dana Kroll and Vanessa Kroll Bennett.^[12][13][14] Vanessa is married to British-American soccer journalist Roger Bennett.^[13]