Thomas H. Lee, a private-equity investor famed for orchestrating the takeover of Snapple within the Nineteen Nineties, has died, a household spokesman mentioned on Thursday.
The billionaire Mr. Lee, 78, based his namesake Boston agency in 1974, far forward of the heyday of so-called leveraged buyouts. He and his contemporaries made their mark borrowing closely and utilizing the funds to push round — and purchase — midsize firms.
The Snapple deal, in 1992, was emblematic of how profitable the strategy may very well be. Thomas H. Lee Companions purchased the beverage firm for $135 million and offered it to a competitor, Quaker Oats, simply two years later for $1.7 billion.
“Tom was a unprecedented particular person … a pioneer in non-public fairness who grew to become an trade icon,” Scott Sperling, a co-chief government of Thomas H. Lee Companions, wrote in an e-mail Thursday night time. “He was an extremely gracious and beneficiant man who was dedicated to his household and neighborhood.”
A Harvard graduate, Mr. Lee was first a securities analyst and later a banker earlier than beginning his firm roughly a decade into his profession. Although his agency by no means grew to become as well-known as rivals like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts or Drexel Burnham Lambert, Mr. Lee loved an enviable monitor file. He invested some $15 billion by means of lots of of transactions over his profession, in keeping with his household.
Amongst his best-known buyouts was the 2003 acquisition of Warner Music from an ailing Time Warner. The transfer made headlines, if not earnings. Mr. Lee’s investor consortium purchased the corporate for $2.6 billion, however took it public a yr later for a shade much less.
Not lengthy after, the agency was compelled to utterly write off its funding within the collapsed commodities dealer Refco, inflicting lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in losses.
Mr. Lee stepped down from his agency in 2006 amid reported disagreements with its executives. He remained a outstanding philanthropist in New York Metropolis.
He additionally continued to take a position below a brand new shingle, giving credence to the nickname he assigned himself: Mr. Lee glided by Tomcat, he mentioned at a 2014 occasion, as a result of he had “9 totally different lives.”
A full obituary will seem shortly.
