When Texas Pacific Group hosted its annual investor conferences, co-founder David Bonderman insisted they not be the dry non-public fairness seminars held by New York rivals in resort ballrooms.
Bonderman favoured areas such because the Arizona resort city of Scottsdale and ran the occasions like his famed birthday bashes, hiring stars together with the likes of Paul McCartney and Sheryl Crow to present outside concert events, handing out CDs or iPods containing playlists he had curated himself.
The lawyer-turned-investor, who died final week aged 82, based TPG in 1992 and inside a couple of years had change into one of many non-public fairness trade’s seminal figures. Whereas a part of a technology of luminaries reminiscent of KKR’s Henry Kravis and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, he marched to his personal beat all through his profession, sustaining many pursuits past simply chasing the final greenback.
Born in 1942 in Los Angeles, Bonderman made his option to Seattle to take a level in Russian research on the College of Washington, engaged on the aspect as a ticket taker on the metropolis’s landmark House Needle tower, later profitable a world journey fellowship. He later enrolled at Harvard Legislation Faculty and did a stint on the American College in Cairo, the place he studied the Arabic language and Islamic regulation.
After graduating from Harvard in 1966, Bonderman taught regulation at Tulane College in New Orleans after which joined the civil rights division on the US Division of Justice beneath President Lyndon Johnson.
Within the early Nineteen Seventies, he landed at powerhouse Washington regulation agency Arnold & Porter. His accomplishments there included a 1983 look earlier than the US Supreme Courtroom the place he sparred with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as he secured a reversal of the conviction of Raymond Dirks, a inventory analyst charged with insider buying and selling.
Amongst his authorized specialities, Bonderman grew to become an skilled in historic landmark preservations. A profitable effort to avoid wasting New York’s beaux arts masterpiece Grand Central station earned the eye of Texas oil tycoon Robert Bass, who later satisfied him to maneuver to Fort Price to assist run the Bass household funding agency, the place his largest win was the profitable buy of distressed American Financial savings & Mortgage.
Bass proved an incubator of a number of future Wall Road titans, with Bonderman sitting amongst Tom Barrack and Marc Lasry, to call two. However his tightest relationship was with 20-something former funding banker Jim Coulter.
In 1992, the 2 created a car they named Air Companions to purchase Continental Airways, a daring transfer given the collection of bankruptcies that had plagued the sector. They turned the provider round and Air Companions stays simply the best-returning fund within the historical past of TPG, which was formally launched in 1993, with an annualised achieve of 81 per cent.
TPG stood out from contemporaries reminiscent of KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle and Apollo. For one, its principal places of work weren’t in New York however in Fort Price and San Francisco. The agency was additionally fast to see the chance in a globalising Asia. Moderately than merely counting on monetary engineering, Coulter and Bonderman would give attention to main operational modifications to turbocharge companies.
“David’s strategy was that investing is problem-solving,” Coulter mentioned. “At that time, non-public fairness investing was only a finance transaction.”
TPG would go on to accumulate family names together with Burger King, J Crew and Neiman Marcus. By the mid-2000s, it was among the many handful of juggernauts with the firepower to pursue $20bn and $30bn takeovers.
However the 2008 monetary disaster delivered a heavy blow. TPG had been behind the $25bn-plus mega-buyouts of Texas utility TXU and on line casino chain Caesars Leisure, each of which went bankrupt within the ensuing years.
A $1bn rescue financing in 2008 for Seattle financial institution Washington Mutual was worn out inside months. TPG would by no means prosper once more to the extent of KKR, Blackstone and Apollo.
There have been authorized scrapes, too. TPG settled civil prices together with a number of different buyout titans over collusive bidding in 2000s buyouts. Collectors of Caesars took management of the corporate after allegations of multibillion-dollar asset stripping by TPG and its deal accomplice, Apollo. Extra lately, Bonderman’s household funding agency backed a cash supervisor accused by regulators and traders of fraud, allegations that led to a civil settlement.
However Bonderman had his share of huge wins within the 2010s, together with with TPG-backed disrupters Uber, Airbnb and Spotify. Gary Loveman, former Caesars chief government, instructed the Monetary Instances that, greater than every other non-public fairness investor, Bonderman contemplated methods to revolutionise industries, citing for instance his long-standing affiliation with Ryanair and his affection for its long-serving chief government Michael O’Leary.
“David was an mental — fascinated by the pursuit, critique and debate of compelling concepts,” Loveman mentioned. “He had a degree of mental curiosity that was not certain by conference or established observe.”
TPG invested in Ryanair in 1996 and Bonderman served because the airline’s chair for greater than twenty years, a interval wherein it grew from a small regional provider into Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers.
O’Leary instructed the FT that “none of Ryanair’s success would have been attainable with out his sage however prescient recommendation, his calm and visionary strategic considering, and his willingness to put on dishevelled garments and attend Rolling Stones concert events”.
Alongside a number of profitable business airline offers, Bonderman’s success allowed him to jet set on his personal private aircraft, one thing he did with gusto.
“He had essentially the most well-travelled non-public jet on earth,” mentioned Tony James, a detailed pal and former government vice-chair of Blackstone, who set out with Bonderman to areas as different as Mongolia, Cuba, South America and Australia.
Upon touchdown, he added, Bonderman would all the time be steeped in his vacation spot’s tradition and historical past.
Amongst causes he backed had been a number of environmental and conservation charities — in Africa he bought jeeps to assist wildlife rangers chase off poachers, autos that grew to become often known as “Bondo mobiles”.
In a nod to his travels within the Sixties, Bonderman’s philanthropy additionally consists of endowed pupil journey fellowships on the College of Washington, the College of Michigan and American College in Cairo.
Bonderman is survived by 5 youngsters and three grandchildren.
Extra reporting from Philip Georgiadis
This text has been amended since publication to mirror that Michael O’Leary is Ryanair’s chief government, not its founder
