If Kohlberg Kravis Roberts succeeds in raising up to $5 billion for its KKR Private Equity Investors, other p.e. firms may follow its example, leading to a shift in the industry, The Wall Street Journal reports. “What makes it exciting is the scale of it, and that it is KKR,” attorney Marco Masoitt of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison told the Journal. “It is a very seductive template.” Already, the paper says, other p.e. giants, including The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group and Texas Pacific Group, are keeping a close eye on the KKR IPO, and for good reason. For one, an IPO would eliminate, at least partly, the need for KKR to reach out to their institutional investors for big sums money when it wants to shoot for a mega deal. What’s more, all the cash flowing in from the IPO will allow KKR to go it alone, allowing it to hold on to more profit for itself and its investors. On the other hand, all that money – a lot of it from hedge funds, according to Bloomberg News – will throw KKR and other large funds like it into familiar territory of not finding enough good investment opportunities and then paying too much for the ones they settle on.