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David Bonderman, the lawyer turned private equity pioneer, has died at age 82.
In the early 1990s, Bonderman co-founded Texas Pacific Group and led the buyout of Continental Airlines. That deal cemented his status as a turnaround tycoon, putting him in a class of swashbuckling financiers, such as Henry Kravis and Stephen Schwarzman, who were bold enough to acquire some of the biggest companies in the US.
Bonderman entered the world of high-stakes buyouts through an unconventional route in his late 40s, after first making his name in law and as a preservationist.
Among his legal exploits, Bonderman defended Raymond Dirks, a stock analyst who had been charged with insider trading in the 1973, ultimately winning an appeal at the US Supreme Court. The 1983 ruling later became a landmark decision in US securities law.
After graduating from the University of Washington and Harvard Law School — and a stint studying in Egypt — Bonderman’s legal career included time at the US Department of Justice and then several years at Washington DC law firm Arnold & Porter.
He then went to work for Robert Bass in Texas. The oilman knew Bonderman from his pro bono work as a preservationist lawyer who successfully petitioned against the tear down of the beaux-arts masterpiece in New York’s Grand Central Terminal.
At Bass’s family office, Bonderman worked closely with junior colleague Jim Coulter. The duo led the rescue of Continental Airlines, a deal that was the precursor to the formation of TPG, the now publicly listed private capital group that manages nearly $250bn in assets.
The airline’s descent towards bankruptcy in 1992 turned into a proving ground for Bonderman and Coulter to show they understood finance as well as how to run complex businesses that needed better management.
The two founded TPG that year and quickly rode a wave of large, highly leveraged corporate takeovers that made it a force on Wall Street.
In 2022, Bonderman and Coulter took TPG public and its assets have since roughly doubled, returning the group to the top echelons of the industry.
“David was an internationalist meaning that he had a very broad view of the world,” Coulter said in an interview with the Financial Times. “He took TPG to Asia, for instance. He had an appreciation for people and personalities of all types and he had a broad set of relationships.”
“What we do today still very much reflects David’s ethos,” Coulter added, noting TPG’s sizeable climate investment operations.
Bonderman is known as one of America’s largest conservationists, pumping millions into preserving natural wildlife as a member of the boards of The Wilderness Society, World Wildlife Fund, American Himalayan Foundation, and the Grand Canyon Trust.
In his later years, Bonderman was invested in sports, buying a minority stake in the Boston Celtics basketball team and also bringing the National Hockey League’s Seattle Kraken to his hometown and constructing its Climate Pledge arena.
TPG called Bonderman “a private equity pioneer, legal scholar, conservationist, and citizen of the world”.
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