Much of this has been discussed previously - just some additional insight. Thomas Lee, Private-Equity Pioneer, Struggled to Reprise Early Successes Boston investor came of age alongside early peers Stephen Schwarzman and Henry Kravis Thomas Lee at his New York office in 2019.PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER GOODNEY/BLOOMBERG By Miriam Gottfried March 5, 2023 7:00 am ET 35 Thomas H. Lee, who helped create the private-equity industry in the 1970s, struggled to capitalize on its explosive growth over the past two decades. The investor, who last month was found dead in his office from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, came of age in the era of such buyout legends as KKR & Co.’s Henry Kravis and George Roberts, Blackstone Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman and Apollo Global Management Inc.’s Leon Black. For a time, he was one of them. At the helm of the Boston firm he founded in 1974, Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, Mr. Lee did a string of successful deals for companies including Snapple Beverage, producing gains and amassing a personal fortune then estimated by Forbes in the hundreds of millions. The firms his peers founded in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s are now public companies managing hundreds of billions of dollars apiece across numerous business lines. The firm he founded never went public and manages $18 billion, mainly in buyouts. Mr. Lee left the firm in 2006. New York-based Lee Equity Partners, which he started then, is a more modest operation, with $3 billion under management. Mr. Lee, who was 78 years old, hadn’t been closely involved with the firm for years before he took the chairman title in 2018, according to a person close to the firm. He would dial into the firm’s Monday-morning investment-committee call but wasn’t often seen in the office, and there were investors in its last fund who had never met him, the person said. In recent years, Mr. Lee was often seen spending weekends alone at the Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he had long rented an apartment, according to friends. He lost more than 30 pounds over the past few years, they said. A longtime golfer who at one point had a 5 handicap, he increased his walking for additional exercise during the pandemic. Thomas Lee in 2019 with Peter Gleysteen, who is currently chief executive of AGL Credit Management.PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER GOODNEY/BLOOMBERG It was a relatively quiet existence for someone who had once been a larger-than-life figure. “I knew him as an icon in Boston,” said Steve Pagliuca, who recently stepped down as chairman of Bain Capital LP, another big private-equity player in the city. Even in the early 1990s, Mr. Lee’s personal life was fraying. His first wife, Barbara Fish Lee, whom he married when both were in their 20s, filed for divorce in 1993. She claimed the right to half their fortune, and after a two-year proceeding, she got it. In 1995, a stockbroker named Laura Goldman was arrested for allegedly harassing and extorting Mr. Lee. Ms. Goldman told authorities that Mr. Lee had raped her at his Palm Beach apartment in 1993. It came out in court documents related to the case that Mr. Lee had paid her $200,000 and up to $15,000 for psychiatric care as part of a settlement intended to stop her from communicating with him and get her to drop all claims against him. As part of the agreement, Ms. Goldman signed an affidavit declaring that her relations with Mr. Lee had been voluntary, Mr. Lee’s attorney told The Wall Street Journal at the time. Mr. Lee, who said he was separated from his wife at that time, told the Journal then that the sex was consensual. He denied “in the strongest of terms any and all allegations” made against him by Ms. Goldman. Ms. Goldman told the Journal after Mr. Lee’s death what she had said before, that she signed the affidavit under pressure, maintaining that he raped her and adding that she regretted harassing him. The episode with Ms. Goldman would drag on for 15 years, finally ending in 2010, when she pleaded guilty to stalking the financier. Around the time of the arrest, cracks began to form in Mr. Lee’s investment empire. John Childs, his second-in-command, left Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1995 to start his own firm, J.W. Childs Associates LP. His departure was preceded by that of another associate, Glenn Hutchins, who would go on to become a co-founder of the technology-investing powerhouse Silver Lake. Mr. Lee invested based on instinct and didn’t care much for due diligence, people who knew him said. Some of his deals failed, including one for the commodities dealer Refco Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection nine weeks after its 2005 initial public offering. Mr. Lee married his second wife, Ann Tenenbaum, in 1996, and later moved full time to New York, where she lived. NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Private Equity Private Equity news, analysis and insights from WSJ's global team of reporters and editors. He went from vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard to East Hampton, and from being finance royalty in Boston to being a wealthy man in New York among men who were far richer. “Boston was his home,” said George Regan, a longtime public-relations executive who counted Mr. Lee as both a client and a friend. “He left because it was uncomfortable to stay.” Mr. Lee and Ms. Tenenbaum moved into an apartment on East 57th Street in Manhattan’s Sutton Place neighborhood, removed from the stately Park Avenue co-ops and mansions where other titans of the buyout industry dwell. When he got to New York, Mr. Lee became less involved in doing deals at Thomas H. Lee Partners. In 1999, Putnam Investments bought a significant stake in the firm’s management company. Mr. Lee’s first fund at Lee Equity was sizable for a first-time fund then, at $1.1 billion. The firm’s record was marred by its 2007 deal for the retailer Deb Shops Inc., which eventually filed for bankruptcy. Lee Equity struggled to raise its next vehicle, and turned to a firm that buys fund stakes at a discount to help raise the cash. None of the firm’s subsequent funds has been as big as its first, according to PitchBook data. It is in the process of raising a new fund and is targeting more than $1.1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. In later years, Mr. Lee allowed that much of his early success in the buyout business could be attributed to having got there first, according to people who knew him. Around 1,500 people attended a memorial service for Mr. Lee on Feb. 27 at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, according to estimates by attendees. Among the speakers were his five children and the dean of admissions and financial aid at Mr. Lee’s alma mater, Harvard University, to which he was a big donor. The final speaker was former first lady and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A brass band led by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis closed out the event with a second line, a New Orleans funeral tradition. Despite setbacks he faced, Mr. Lee died a wealthy man, with a fortune Forbes pegged at $2 billion last year. But some of his early private-equity peers are worth many times that. Mr. Schwarzman, worth an estimated $28 billion, took home more than $1.2 billion in 2022 alone.
I'm not surprised he's standing in front of a Mona Lisa. Even a replica cost millions of dollars. This level of success likes to express their wealth through Art. R.I.P.
I do not have a problem with people committing suicide, that is an option that all of us have, but why do elegant people such as this gentleman choose to shoot themselves, especially when that does not always work. Why can't they just ingest sleeping pills, like a normal person.
Sleeping pills doesn't always work either, sometimes one wakes up feeling really really bad. I am not speaking from experience.
That is just not true. There are a ton of businesses that will knock off any oil painting you want at that size for less than a $1000. There are knock off Monet's in oil on ebay right now for $50 bucks from Asia. Beautiful work too. There is no shortage of painters in the world that need work. I can't imagine a real art collector though wanting a knock off of the Mona Lisa. That is about as lame and unsophisticated as it gets. That is something the wife that knows absolutely nothing about art buys for the dining room.
%% Strange also, some with billions would rent + not buy in FLA; but good idea walking more. Amazing how Snapple sector has grown; saw a WSJ chart with bottled water passing KO coke sales