Thomas Haskell Lee was an American billionaire businessperson, financier, and investor best known for being a pioneer in the trillion-dollar business of private equity that helped to reshape corporate America, with his firm Thomas H. Lee Partners being among the oldest and largest private equity firms globally. Lee was a 1965 Harvard College graduate, he worked as an analyst at Rothschild in New York City and First National Bank of Boston, where he rose to be the Vice President before opening hi... moreThomas Haskell Lee was an American billionaire businessperson, financier, and investor best known for being a pioneer in the trillion-dollar business of private equity that helped to reshape corporate America, with his firm Thomas H. Lee Partners being among the oldest and largest private equity firms globally. Lee was a 1965 Harvard College graduate, he worked as an analyst at Rothschild in New York City and First National Bank of Boston, where he rose to be the Vice President before opening his own firm Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1974. His firm focused on acquiring companies through leveraged buyout transactions. His most famous, and lucrative, buyouts was his purchase of Snapple for $135 million in 1992 which he sold to Quaker Oats, in 1994 for $1.7 billion. Lee was also active in Philanthropy, he donated $22 million to Harvard University. He also served as trustee of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, NYU Langone Medical Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, just to name a few. He retired in 2006 and was estimated to be worth $2 billion at the time of his death.
