(Bloomberg) -- David Bonderman once told his former boss that he didn’t know anything about investing. By the end of his life, he was considered a legend in the private equity world and had directed his firm, TPG Inc., in doling out billions of dollars to turn around companies.
“Friend, brother, partner, teacher, mentor, psychologist, rock star,” Colony Capital co-founder Tom Barrack said of Bonderman, who died Wednesday at 82. “A master-class professor in how to build long line relationships and true irreplicable value in people and businesses.”
He was a “legend,” said Kneeland Youngblood, the co-founder of private equity firm Pharos Capital Group, who considered Bonderman, known as Bondo, a close friend.
“The beauty of David was not only what he was, but what he was not — he was not a jerk, he treated people respectfully, whatever their station in life — whether they were a captain of industry or a waiter,” Youngblood said. “He lived a very full life to the very end.”
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer David Solomon has been working with Bonderman since the 1990s and praised his “wise counsel” and “extraordinary business judgment” in a statement, adding “but more than that, he became a great friend and personal mentor of mine.”
Bonderman grew TPG from a three-person shop investing $66 million to acquire Continental Airlines out of bankruptcy into a more than 1,800-person firm with $239 billion of assets under management as of Sept. 30.
He started his career as a litigator for the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. During a stint at a Washington law firm, Bonderman met Robert Bass and moved to Fort Worth to manage the Bass family’s investments. While working for Bass, he met Jim Coulter, and they later founded TPG.
“Bob, I don’t know anything about investing,” Bonderman told Bass, according to an obituary released by Bonderman’s family, TPG, Wildcat Capital Management and the Seattle Kraken, the National Hockey League team he owned.
“David was one of the true pioneers in private equity and an inspiration to the next generation of investment leaders,” said General Atlantic Chief Executive Officer Bill Ford. “His intellectual curiosity, deal acumen and investment agility made him one of the greats of our industry. He will be missed by so many of us.”
Marc Lasry, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Avenue Capital Group, met Bonderman when he was 29 and traveled with him frequently. One time, Lasry said, Bonderman asked him to dinner and the two ended up flying to Marrakech, Morocco.
“He had a meeting and wanted company for the day,” Lasry said. “He was always the smartest person in the room, but, more importantly, he was kind and generous with his time and always available when I needed help or advice from a friend. He had a love for life and a passion for adventure.”
In 2018, Bonderman brought the NHL to the Pacific Northwest, scoring approval for the Kraken to start in the 2021-22 season.
“David Bonderman lived a life that was astounding in its breadth of achievement, unflinching in its commitment to excellence and relentless in its passion for improving lives – particularly in his adopted home state of Washington,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement.
--With assistance from Randall Williams.
(Updates with comments from Marc Lasry in tenth and eleventh paragraphs.)
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