on april 2, 2007, it was announced that kohlberg kravis roberts (kkr) had entered an agreement to acquire first data in one of the largest leveraged buy-outs in history, and on october 1, 2007, kkr officially took over the first data corporation. ric duques retired, and michael capellas, previously the ceo of mci inc., the president of hewlett-packard company, and also the chairman/ceo of the compaq computer corporation was appointed ceo. as a privately owned company, first data's stock was taken off the new york stock exchange on september 24, 2007. however, the company's lbo was financed with $24 billion in debt, and it remains heavily leveraged. in june 2014, first data raised a historic $3.5 billion private placement. $1.2 billion of the placement came from kkr; however the majority, $2.3 billion, was from hedge funds, mutual funds and institutions. with this action the company reduced total debt by $3.3 billion, improving net leverage by 1.3 turns and significantly reducing annual cash interest payments. the company continues to maintain investor relations pages on its web site and to publish quarterly financial results. within two months of the kkr acquisition, the company laid off 1,700 employees across north america, europe and australia, about 6% of its workforce.