KKR Said to Hire Northstar’s Shastry as Southeast Asia Head

(Bloomberg) -- KKR & Co. is appointing Ashish Shastry from Northstar Group as head of Southeast Asia, in the firm’s most senior hiring in the region since 2014, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Shastry has been Southeast Asia head for Northstar, a firm backed by TPG Capital. He’ll join KKR later this year, taking over part of the role now held by Ming Lu, who oversees Southeast Asia and is co-head of Asia private equity, the person said, asking not to be identified before the company’s announcement.

New York-based KKR has invested more than $2 billion across Southeast Asia from 2005, including putting more than $350 million into Masan Consumer Corp. in Vietnam’s largest private equity investment. KKR and Warburg Pincus LLC this month joined a $550 million fund-raising by Go-Jek, an Indonesian startup which provides motorcycle rides on demand.

Anita Davis, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman at KKR, declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported the story earlier.

In 2014, KKR hired Jaka Prasetya, founder of Leafgreen Capital Partners as managing director leading the firm’s credit and special situations business in Southeast Asia. The same year, the fund hired two other executives for Southeast Asia: Rahul Bhargava, formerly with Leafgreen Capital, and Deyllen Harrington, an ex-JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive, according to its website.

Shastry joined Northstar in 2012. Before that, he spent more than 13 years at TPG and worked an investment banker at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Princeton University, according to Northstar’s website. He didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment on Wednesday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cathy Chan in Hong Kong at kchan14@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Paul Panckhurst, Andreea Papuc

©2016 Bloomberg L.P.