Thomas H Lee, a billionaire financier who led some of the private equity industry’s most successful deals during its early rise in the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 78.
Lee founded Thomas H Lee Partners in 1974, a boutique investment outfit that perfected the early art of leveraged buyouts and grew to become one of the industry’s largest firms by the mid-1990s after a string of successful deals highlighted by the takeover of beverage company Snapple.
By the mid-2000s, Lee had become one of the wealthiest private equity investors in the US and his Boston-based firm was among the industry’s largest by assets, managing more than $12bn, and a prolific dealmaker in a boom of large takeovers such as Dunkin Brands and media ratings group Nielsen.