Today's New York Times [registration required] discusses the pending initial public offering (IPO) of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). In so doing, it glosses over the role of its founding partner, Jerome Kohlberg. But just because The Times ignores him, that's no reason for you to.

That's because I interviewed him three years ago for the Swarthmore College Bulletin. So without further ado, here's my interview with him:

"Kohlberg was co-founder of the leveraged buyout specialist KKR and is now special limited principal of Kohlberg & Co. His business success began with the simple yet powerful notion that it was better to risk one's own capital than to be an intermediary. "One of my friend's fathers was a merchant banker,' he recalls. "He didn't act for commissions. He stood and fell on his own investments, which he put beside those of other clients. I realized that being a principal was what I wanted.""

There have been lots of rumors lately about IPOs of hedge funds. The latest comes from a BusinessWeek blog that the Carlyle Group is preparing an IPO of its leveraged finance segment (the focus is primarily on mortgage-backed securities).

Apparently, there is already a management team in place (yea, as a public company, you need some big-time resumes). They include former Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) vice chairman James H. Hance Jr. and former Cerberus Capital managing director John C. Stomber.

As the name implies, a leveraged fund can be risky. But, with frothy equity markets and investors hungry for alternative investments, I'm sure the Carlyle fund will get traction. The buzz is that it will raise as much as $1 billion.

Although, it looks like Carlyle wants to raise the capital on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, which does make it more difficult for the average US investor to partipicate.

The filing is expected by the end of June.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

I've quoted comScore quite a bit over the years. The company is the leader in in-depth industry research – especially on the digital side.

Well, now the company has filed to go public.

While comScore has traditional researchers, there is also a panel of more than two million Internet users that help provide usage patterns. Yes, that's how the firm knows such things as how many users are watching online videos or not clicking on a banner ad.

It's a very lucrative business. Last year, comScore chalked up $66.3 million in revenue and a hefty $10.9 million in cash flow from operations. Customers are usually large companies like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO).

Fees are charged on a subscription basis. This allows for a recurring revenue stream -- which investors love.

comScore's underwriters include Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) and Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB). The proposed ticker symbol is SCOR.

You can check out the IPO filing at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

It must be something in the water, but Blackstone Group LP's workers produce nine times the profit as their counterparts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS), according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.

Blackstone's 770 workers produced an average of $2.95 million in net income last year compared with $360,000 at Goldman Sachs which has about 31,000 workers, Bloomberg says. This raises some interesting questions about how the market will value the New York-based hedge fund company.

If investors value it like Goldman, it will trade at about 10 times earnings with a market capitalization of $23 billion while a Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG) multiple would value Blackstone at about $29 billion, Bloomberg News says. Goldman's market capitalization is $87 billion and Fortess Investment Group's is $37 billion.

Blackstone, though, will trade at a premium to both companies -- at least at first -- because its performance has been amazing over the past few years.