ch they are formed are still poorly understood. Young and compact KDCs in fast rotators might have formed via star-formation in situ. According to this scenario, the stellar component of the KDC is formed in initially kinematically misaligned gaseous regions, probably originating from externally accreted gas or unequal mass merging , where the orientation of the merging orbit defines the orientation of rotation of the resulting KDC. Following this line of thought, suggested that counter-rotating cores can only result from retrograde mergers.

However, this scenario could not hold for the large and old KDCs found in slow rotators, whose stellar population was probably formed at the same epoch as the main body of the galaxy. In this case, processes such as gas accretion or accretion of low-mass stellar systems are more likely to affect the outer parts of the galaxy and can not be consistent with observations that show no color gradients between the KDC and the surrounding galaxy [@Carollo_1997].

The most plausible formation scenario that could explain the similarity of the stellar content of the KDC and the main body of the galaxy is major merging. This scenario has been confirmed in simulations [e.g. @Bois_2010; @Bois_2011], resulting in elliptical-like and slow-rotating merger remnants hosting KDCs only when the two progenitor galaxies were initially following retrograde merger orbits. However, observations indicate a lower limit to the true rate of occurrence of KDCs in ETGs which can not be explained only by retrograde mergers, pointing to the need of additional KDC formation scenarios.

Here we show that, a KDC might as well result from an initially prograde major merger. The kinematic decoupling in the center of the final elliptical-like merger remnant can result from a short-lived change of the orbital spin of the two progenitor galaxies right after their second encounter. This new channel for the formation of KDCs might serve as an additional mechanism that can help towards explaining their observed rate o