Private equity firm KKR (KKR) makes another try at an IPO, offering nearly 205 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange that it expects to yield $1.9 billion. Call it “Barbarians at the NYSE”.

The firm, parent of the original leveraged buyout king Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, said it may come back to raise another half billion.

KKR tried an IPO once before, in 2007, but then came the financial debacle and the firm’s first coming-out party was canceled.

That same year its $43 billion buyout of TXU Corp. proved a bookend to its infamous LBO of RJR Nabisco almost a decade earlier.

Bloomberg says that KKR has slashed the value of its investment in TXU, now called Energy Futures Holdings Corp., by 70%.

The RJR Nabisco deal in 1988 was the largest leveraged buyout at the time. It inspired “Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco,” by Bryan Burrough and John Helvar.

Be that as it may, as of March 31, Kohnberg Kravis Roberts had $54.7 billion in assets under management, 600 employees and 14 offices worldwide. Its investment portfolio will serve you a beer, give you a ferry ride, make your kids happy, make you healthier and give you plenty to read.

It has been traded through KKR & Co. L.P., based in Guernsey, the Channel Islands, on Euronext Amsterdam.  Trading will now switch to the NYSE.

Its investment portfolio ranges from publishers to toys to health care. Among the portfolio in North America: Primedia (PRM), Accellent, Legg Mason (LM), NuVox Communications, Sealy (ZZ), Dollar General (DG), Biomet, and the above-mentioned Energy Future Holdings.

In Europe it holds waste management, telecom, publishing and floor manufacturing, and ferry transportation in Istanbul, among other fields.

In Asia and Australia, it’s in telecom, cement, semiconductors and brewing.

KKR says that often the companies it invests in are in transition, or need to be reorganized or refocused.

As of this writing, Wayne Faulkner did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.