Bruce Karatz

In October 2014, Karatz partnered with Guy Nafilyan, the former Chairman and CEO of Kaufman & Broad France, to create the Paris-based real estate development company called Nafilyan & Partners. Karatz and Nafilyan each own 37.5% of the company and the remaining 25% is owned by two investment groups and two financial institutions. Nafilyan & Partners opened for sale its first development in Villepinte, a suburb of Paris, France on October 11, 2014. As of October 2014, Nafilyan & Partners has 22 projects representing approximately 2,000 residences throughout suburban Paris.

From May 2010 to August 2011, Karatz worked as a full-time volunteer with the non-profit, HomeBoy Industries, which provides a second chance to formerly incarcerated gang members by training them to re-enter society. Today, Karatz is a member of the Homeboy Industries’ Board of Trustees and serves as a board member of Phoenix House, a non-profit leader in substance abuse treatment. He is also chairman of the Bruce Karatz Family Foundation.

In 2007, Karatz founded the Keep Your Home Foundation to support people in California facing foreclosures as a result of the mortgage crisis. Keep Your Home Foundation supports a clearinghouse website to provide information to homeowners facing foreclosure.

On November 12, 2006, Karatz retired from KB Home and agreed to pay the Company the profits he received based on KB Home’s stock option back-dating procedures. On September 15, 2008, Karatz settled civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") arising out of these stock option back-dating procedures. Under this settlement, Karatz, among other things, consented to an order barring him, for five years ending in September 2013, from acting as an officer or director of a company with securities registered with the SEC or required to file reports with the SEC. On November 10, 2010, a federal judge sentenced Karatz to probation for a term of five years, including eight months of home detention, for his role in the Company’s stock option back-dating procedures. The federal judge later entered an order providing for the early termination of Karatz’s five-year term of probation effective April 27, 2012. The sentence of probation was based on a report of the U.S. Probation Office concluding that Karatz’s "conduct does not appear to have resulted in any pecuniary harm" to KB Home or its shareholders and stating as follows:

In 2005, Karatz’ last full year as Chairman and CEO, KB Home’s profits were $1.29 billion.

In December 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Karatz directed that KB Home become the first, and at that time only, national homebuilder to go to New Orleans to support re-building efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. KB Home acquired 74 finished lots in downtown New Orleans and bought 3,000 acres in Jefferson Parish. At the time, Karatz said,

After the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Kaufman and Broad spearheaded the effort to rebuild Camp Hollywoodland, a rustic canyon retreat for inner-city children whose main hall, dining room and other structures were gutted by fire.

In the early 1990s, when the real estate market in Southern California collapsed, Karatz moved aggressively to expand the company by acquiring other regional home builders such as the San Antonio-based builder Rayco for $105 million in 1996. The success of the new business model led KB Home to acquire additional companies and expand organically into markets across the country to provide customized homes for middle-class families.

In the early 1990s, Karatz co-chaired along with Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer LA, which raised over $16 million to place computers in all LA precincts.

In 1981 Karatz re-joined the Los Angeles headquarters of KB Home and in 1986 was named CEO. As CEO, Karatz oversaw the company’s growth into one of the most successful home building companies in the world. Karatz is credited with changing the company’s business model of building homes on speculation and then selling them, in favor of building houses on order. KB Home's new business model allowed middle class home buyers to customize their homes and defined a far more efficient and profitable business model for the industry.

After spending a short time as an in-house counsel, Karatz moved to the home building side of the business and soon thereafter became head of KB Home’s French division. He made a mark in 1977 when he installed a full-sized model home on the roof of the Au Printemps department store. More than 500,000 people toured the rooftop house. During his time in France, KB Home grew into one of France's largest homebuilders.

In 1972, Karatz joined Kaufman & Broad (the company took the KB Home name in 2001) as an associate general counsel.

Karatz has been married three times. From 1968 to 2001, he was married to Janet Dreisen, an art consultant and board member of various arts and other non-profit institutions in Los Angeles. From 2001 to 2005 he was married to Sandra Lee, a television personality. Lee converted to Judaism. Karatz is currently married to Lilly Tartikoff, a leading cancer activist best known for co-founding the annual Revlon Run/Walk events in New York City and Los Angeles and Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program, which helped raise more than $80 million for cancer research.

Karatz was born in Chicago, Il and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a middle class Jewish family. His father owned a movie theater and his mother was a homemaker. He graduated from high school in 1963 and from Boston University in 1967. Karatz received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Southern California in 1970.

Bruce E. Karatz (born October 10, 1945) is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is noted for his role as Chairman and CEO of KB Home, and for his philanthropic efforts to help re-build both Los Angeles after the L.A. Riots and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. During the 20 years Karatz served as CEO, KB Home grew revenues from $491 million to $11 billion and grew annual home deliveries from 4,500 homes in 1986 to over 39,000 homes in 2006. Karatz now operates BK Capital LLC and is based in Beverly Hills, California. In March 2013, Karatz was a recipient of The Malibu Times' 23rd Annual Dolphin Awards.