Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the US buy-out group, has hired Taketo Yamakawa, chief executive of GE Consumer Finance in north-east Asia, as a managing director and chief executive of its investment activities in Japan.

Yamakawa led an enterprise with over $10bn (€8.3bn) in assets and more than 4,000 employees at GE. He starts at KKR on April 1.