The business stories that matter, by Fortune's Colin Barr
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February 26, 2008, 5:15 pm

Private equity rallies as KKR watches

Tuesday was a rare good day for stocks in the alternative-investment business. As the private equity industry’s wheelers and dealers met in Munich to talk about the next huge thing, shares of Blackstone (BX), Fortress (FIG) and Och-Ziff (OZM) staged a sharp rally, rising at least 6% each. Och-Ziff, a hedge fund firm that went public back in November and has since seen its shares lose a third of their value, posted a better-than-expected adjusted profit for the fourth quarter, due in part to a lower-than-expected tax rate. It’s not clear that the earnings explain the rise in these stocks, though, which makes it at least plausible that a big institution was buying shares to build a position. Meanwhile, it has been more than three months since another private equity titan, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, last amended its IPO filing. Sure, the markets are choppy, and yes, the company is dealing with headaches tied to its KKR Financial (KFN) affiliate, which has been trying to refinance some short-term debt. But on a day like today, a rush to feed at the public trough must surely seem tempting to the rich guys who run KKR.

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Colin Barr covers business and finance for Fortune.com. Previously he was an editor at TheStreet.com and author of the weekly Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column, and an editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
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