David Bonderman, the US private equity titan who played a key role in the expansion of Ryanair as chairman and a major shareholder over more than two decades, has died. He was 82.
Mr Bonderman died on Wednesday, according to a statement from his family and private equity firm TPG. A cause of death was not cited.
As a co-founder of TPG, Mr Bonderman was a leading member of a generation of financial entrepreneurs who built fledgling buyout shops into Wall Street powerhouses. TPG had $239 billion (€227 billion) of assets under management as of September 30th.
Mr Bonderman had an eye for unconventional bets. “Returns tend to be better in places where either the troops are in the street, or the prices are low,” he said of his investing approach.
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An investor in a wide array of deals, he was best known in Ireland for his investment in Ryanair in the mid 1990s.
In 1996, Mr Bonderman and TPG provided about IR£20 million worth of loans and IR£1 million in equity to the carrier in return for a 20 per cent stake in the airline, which was a fraction of the size it is now. Today it has a market capitalisation of €20.4 billion.
With that investment, Mr Bonderman became chairman of Ryanair. It was a position he held until 2020, overseeing its growth under chief executive Michael O’Leary from a small regional carrier in the UK and Ireland to Europe’s biggest airline.
Away from Ireland, he drew skepticism with his first big deal in 1993, leading the $450 million recapitalisation of Continental Airlines during its second bankruptcy. TPG – known then as Texas Pacific Group – netted a ninefold profit when it sold its stake in the airline.
Other unloved brands that drew TPG’s interest and money were airlines US Airways and America West, clothier J. Crew and music instrument maker Fender. As a venture investor, he and his firm made early and successful bets on Airbnb, Spotify and Uber.
“David is a contrarian par excellence,” Clive Bode, a TPG partner, said in a 2016 video paying tribute to his corporate citizenship. “He likes complex, ridiculously treacherous transactions. Neither complexity nor difficulty dissuades him.”
In the case of Uber, he joined the board of the ride-hailing company in 2013 after his firm partnered with Google Ventures on a $258 million financing round. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick requested TPG’s involvement so that Mr Bonderman could help the company address a long list of regulatory challenges around the world, Brad Stone wrote in The Upstarts (2017).
Mr Bonderman had a net worth of $4.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Known as Bondo to his friends, he flouted the image of the sleek-suited financier, arriving at meetings in khakis and loud, mismatched socks.
He once holed up for weeks on a superyacht off the coast of Australia while authorities sought to question him over a $700 million tax bill. In 2004, he said comparing US president George W Bush to an oft-ridiculed predecessor, Millard Fillmore, was an insult – to Fillmore.
At a 2007 conference in Hong Kong, according to the Financial Times, he criticised the Japanese for being slow to make deals and added: “They hate us, but that’s okay because we hate them too.” Over objections from the Obama administration, Mr Bonderman attended annual investment conferences in St Petersburg hosted by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2014 and 2015, following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.
In 2017, he resigned under pressure from Uber’s board after he cracked a sexist joke during a companywide meeting on an internal investigation into alleged sexual harassment within the company. The investigation resulted in Kalanick stepping down as chief executive.
Mr Bonderman said his comment “came across in a way that was the opposite of what I intended, but I understand the destructive effect it had, and I take full responsibility for that”.
With his wife, Laurie Michaels, a clinical psychologist and philanthropist, Mr Bonderman had five children. – Bloomberg
