Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/NEW YORK: US billionaire financier and philanthropist Thomas H Lee, who led some of the private equity industry’s most successful deals during its early rise in the 1980s and 1990s, died aged 78, his family said on Thursday.
Lee’s family said in a statement that they were “extremely saddened” by his death. The New York Post reported that Lee died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Manhattan office. According to Forbes, he had net wealth worth $2 billion at the time of his death.
‘A billionaire, family man and philanthropist’
Lee’s family friend and spokesman Michael Sitrick described him, saying: “While the world knew Lee 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.”
Lee hepled pioneer the debt-fuelled corporate acquisition known as a leveraged buyout. He was also known for acquiring beverage firm Snapple in 1992 and selling it two years later to Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion – 32 times of what he bought it for.
Lee was also a philanthropist and avid art collector and served as a trustee for prominent New York City art organisations like the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
A Harvard graduate, he was first a securities analyst, later becoming a banker before starting his company roughly a decade into his career. In 1996, he donated $22 million to his alma mater Harvard University, part of which has been used to financially assist students.
