Famed billionaire Thomas H. Lee’s family announced Thursday that the leveraged-buyout pioneer has died at 78, with The New York Post reporting that the financier was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Manhattan office.
Lee’s family confirmed the man’s death in a statement, saying that “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.”
While the statement said nothing about the circumstances surrounding Lee’s death, the Post cited unnamed police sources as saying that the businessman had fatally shot himself at his office.
Lee, whom Forbes magazine listed as having a $2B net worth, started the firm that became Thomas Lee Partners in 1974, but parted ways with the company in 2005.
Thomas Lee Partners was a pioneer in leveraged buyouts − transactions where investors take publicly traded companies private using large amounts of borrowed funds. If a buyout firm later successfully re-sells or takes an acquired company public again at a higher price, the firm can reap big rewards on the relatively small amount of its own money that was put up.
Under Lee’s supervision, Thomas Lee Partners led several famous and highly profitable leveraged buyouts, including the 1985 $28M purchase of Sterling Jewelers and 1992’s acquisition of beverage giant Snapple for a reported $135M.
The firm re-sold Sterling − now a part of Signet Jewelers (SIG) − just two years later for $210M. Similarly, Thomas Lee Partners sold Snapple after only two years to Quaker Oats, a unit of PepsiCo (PEP), for $1.7B.
After leaving Thomas Lee Partners, Lee founded middle-market private-equity firm Lee Equity Partners, where he served as chairman at the time of his death.
As for Thomas Lee Partners, current co-CEOs Todd Abbrecht and Scott Sperling lauded the firm’s founder Thursday in a statement, writing that “Tom was an iconic figure in private equity. He helped pioneer an industry and mentored generations of young professionals who followed in his footsteps.”
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