Thomas H. Lee obit

US billionaire financier Thomas Lee found dead at 78

 

He was not on the list.

A US billionaire financier who helped pioneer the debt-fueled corporate acquisition known as a leveraged buyout has been found dead, his family says.

In a statement, Thomas H Lee's family said they were "extremely saddened" by the 78-year-old's death.

The New York Post reports that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Manhattan office.

The NYPD told the BBC an unnamed 78-year-old man had been found dead on Thursday morning at 767 Fifth Avenue.

The address is where the offices of Thomas H Lee Capital LLC are listed.

According to Forbes, Mr Lee was worth $2bn (£1.6bn) at his time of death.

The police spokesman did not confirm the man had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, noting the cause of death would be for a medical examiner to determine.

In a statement to BBC News, police said they had responded to a 911 call shortly after 11:00 (16:00 GMT) on Thursday morning from an office on Fifth Avenue.

"Upon arrival EMS [Emergency Medical Services] responded and pronounced the male deceased at the scene," they said.

A statement by family friend and spokesman Michael Sitrick said: "While the world knew him as one of the pioneers in the private equity business and a successful businessman, we knew him as a devoted husband, father, grandfather, sibling, friend and philanthropist who always put others' needs before his own."

Alongside his pioneering of the leveraged buyout, Mr Lee was also known for acquiring beverage company Snapple in 1992 and selling it two years later to Quaker Oats for $1.7bn - 32 times what he bought it for.

Mr Lee was also celebrated for his philanthropy, and had served as a trustee for prominent New York City art organisations like the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1996, he donated $22m to his alma mater Harvard University, part of which has been used to provide financial aid for students.

"I've been lucky to make some money. I'm more than happy to give some of it back," he said at the time.

In 1974, Lee founded a new investment firm to focus on acquiring companies through leveraged buyout transactions. By the mid-1980s, Thomas H. Lee Partners was firmly established among the top tier of a new class of private equity investors, while taking a friendlier approach than the so-called corporate raiders of the era (e.g., Nelson Peltz, Ronald Perelman, Carl Icahn). One of the firm's early successes was the 1985 acquisition of Akron, Ohio-based Sterling Jewelers for $28 million. Lee reportedly put in less than $3 million and when the company was sold two years later for $210 million walked away with over $180 million in profits. The combined company was an early predecessor to what is now Signet Group, one of Europe's largest jewelry retail chains. In 1992, THL's acquisition of Snapple Beverages marked the resurrection of the leveraged buyout after several dormant years in the wake of the RJR Nabisco takeover, the fall of Michael Milken, and the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After ceding public attention to his competitors, most notably Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the Snapple Beverages transaction catapulted Lee to prominence. Only eight months after buying the company, Lee took Snapple Beverages public and in 1994, only two years after the original acquisition, Lee sold the company to Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion. Lee was estimated to have made $900 million for himself and his investors from the sale. Quaker Oats would subsequently sell the company, which performed poorly under new management, three years later, for only $300 million. From 1974 through 2006, THL raised more than $22 billion of capital in six institutional private equity funds and completed more than 100 investments, representing in excess of $125 billion of aggregate purchase price.

Lee was married twice. He divorced his first wife, Barbara Fish Lee, in 1995, after he made public the fact that he had an affair with a woman who was later tried for extortion. Lee's second wife was Ann Tenenbaum of Savannah, Georgia. Lee had five children. Lee was an avid art collector and a friend of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. In June 2008, at the conclusion of Hillary's unsuccessful presidential run, she and Bill were reported to have stayed at his East Hampton, New York beach front home for a few days for the period when she was out of the public eye.

At the time of his death, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2 billion

He is survived by his wife, Ann Tenenbaum, and his five children.