KKR has agreed to pay $250m to resolve a US Justice Department lawsuit alleging it repeatedly broke federal merger-filing rules, the largest civil penalty ever imposed for such violations.

According to the Justice Department, KKR evaded scrutiny across at least 16 transactions in 2021 and 2022. The department said the firm altered documents in filings for at least eight deals, systematically omitted required documents in at least 10, and failed to make any filing at all for at least two.

As one of the world's largest investment firms with more than $744bn in assets under management, KKR made over 100 premerger filings from 2021 and was well versed in the law's requirements, the department noted.