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So, David Bondman, it's amazing to read about his impact on the broader investment world. He is a one of the best known names, one of the icons. You knew him better than anybody in this business. What specifically did he bring to this business that was unique to him?
David really is a legend in the industry. But he's a legend for several reasons, and I think there's three particular things. First of all, he pioneered a type of investing. Secondly, he built a firm that had a distinctive place in the industry. And thirty had a really interesting personal style that I think helped evolve the style of this industry. And So what did he do, how did that work in practice?
What was he doing as a deal maker that really set him apart?
David did deal making as problem solving. So if you think about some of his signature deals, they were deals that everyone saw but no one else was willing to take on. And it wasn't that he was taking on more risk, it was that he saw something different. Take the Continental Airlines deal, a legendary deal in the industry, the most hated company in America, the biggest bankruptcy in
US history had sat there for two years. Dave and I put together a deal that carved out a new continental and took it from worse to first in seven years. It was Warren Buffett said that airlines were financial sinkholes. David over and over made successful investments in airlines. When others saw the SNL crisis, David saw the SNL opportunity.
We created the good bank bad bank structure for American savings when working with Bess, and then we exported that structure around the world to do bank rescues in China, in Korea, again deals that no one else did, and that a problem solving approach really appeared a moment that the industry was mostly about changing capital structures, not companies.
All right, So you said something to me before we came on air which I found fascinating, which is that David was a polymath investor. The Blueberg audience is pretty smart, but you need to break this down what that actually means in practice.
Poly Math is from the Greek and it's basically a person who has broad and diverse interests but uses that knowledge and interest to solve problems and So David really didn't come to investing until his forties. Yeah, think about that. He had several careers before he was a litigator. He was argued in front of the Supreme Court. He taught
law Tulane, he studied Islamic law on Tunis. This was a person that never took a finance class, didn't know accounting, and yet he brought that broad experience and problem solving expertise to the problems of investing. And his ability to use different experiences he had to solve problems I think really created his style, and it's a polymass style. It was not one thing. It was a unique ability to see opportunity and frankly solve problems well.
And it translated into him being, I have to say, one of those eclectic, maybe eccentric sort of figures in an industry that didn't always certainly the broader Wall Street doesn't always sort of embrace change.
So how was he received in this broader Wall Street world? In your estimation, David was many things, but he was never boring. We used to laugh that David often brought like a rock and roll backbeat into rooms that were used to classical music. It was a very different style. He was known for his ridiculous socks. I mean they were just ridiculous. When others were drinking fine wine, he was drinking diet coke. He's flew one thousand hours a
year to meetings anywhere. It's a very personal thing for him. And his style was informal, it was direct. He couldn't stand obfuscation. And that style was sort of a different a different wind in the industry at the time, and it opened up the opportunity for different types of styles to really flourish. It's an industry that had incredible talent among its founding brethren, but David brought I think a little bit of a different attitude and frankly, you know,
a lot of fun into a very serious business. And so how do you be able to firm around that?
I mean that you can be sort of a you know, sort of an iconoclast as a single person.
You know, maybe as a small firm.
You guys started out as three people in ninety two, ninety three, but now thousands of employees, quarter trillion dollars in assets. How does that sort of grow into something this big.
I've been doing this long time. Culture and curiosity, so in some ways, what we described you and I about David became how you would describe PPG in some ways. At a time that the industry was very much about finance, was very much focused in New York. We came out of a family off in Texas. We set up on the West Coast. I used to say that when you do sports a lot, Jason, that we were playing the same game, but differently. We were the West Coast offense of private equity. And to do that you have to
get a culture of curiosity and problem solving. And I think at the first fundraise we did for TPG, our tagline was contrarianism, complexity, and change. At a time the industry was more focused on franchise businesses and finance. Contrarianism, complexity, and change. And I think those lines of problem solving and a different approach really were what David brought to the business in the early days.
Not afraid to take big swings, I mean, was that but part of his ethos do you think, like being able to really go big on something.
It was never about ego or size. It was about really interesting problems and sometimes we got it wrong. Yeah, if you're doing this type of investing. You know, five percent of the time you'll make mistakes, and probably you should be making that sort of risk. But the key is never make the same mistakes if you can help it, and importantly learn from all of them. And David and I think our firm has been a lifelong learner on those.
So I think somehow we've been able to grow with the industry but still keep some of that essence of doing it a little differently and looking at new deals. I mean even today, as you know, Jason, we've taken on impact investing, climate investing. These are new things, new problems, done in a new way, and that ethos I think was what we started with almost forty years ago, and we've tried to very much guard today.
How did you build a partnership with him? You guys are not the same You showed up in Texas? You know, Dartmouth undergrad, Stanford Business School, He was a University of Washington bankruptcy lawyer, save Grand Central. How does that marriage of a sort happen?
I think there's two types of partnerships. One are people who are very much the same, almost can complete each other's senses. The other type of partnership are people who
are very different but share the same values. And I think David and I brought different skill sets, different views of the world, but values on fairness, the idea of you can leave the last cent on the table to create a win win, and we agreed on the type of firm and culture we wanted to build, so complimented each other, respected each other, but also brought some balance to the equation.
How do you think he changed you as an investor and as an executive.
I think David was, as well as being a great investor, simply a great business person. You know, he served on eighty different corporate boards. Who does that? Eighty different corporate boards, from GM to Dakati, from Behringer to Burger King. Immensely diverse, and that viewpoint, something that was often underestimated with David, really helped me be a better businessman. It's about being straightforward,
about seeing different things. It's about patients from time to time, and even when things go wrong, you don't step back, you step in. So I think his polymath skills really extended into the business world.
All right, I mentioned earlier this is a massive, massive industry at this point that what we used to call private equity, it's now alternative investing. These firms, including yours, are doing lots of different things.
How do you take that Bonderman.
Ethos, you know, the sort of like you know he's calling into an investment committee, meaning from Tim buck to to you know, now a publicly traded company. How do you maintain that essence? Because I know that culture is something that's important to you, you study it, how do you really institutionalize that culture fight conformity.
In all ways? I think if you were starting this business today, sometimes I think the people who are looking at it feel they have to learn finance in their crip and have to go through internships. David came to this, as I said before ines, he brought that wide set of experiences, and I think the understanding that you can ask different questions, approach problems in different ways is something
the industry needs to say true to today. So that spirit, the spirit of problem solving, curiosity, a little bit of courage put together with a broad view, is something the industry still needs to say. And I think the industry is delivering that immense talent in the industry. We have to just make sure that it's not delivered in one Way.
And so as he sort of kind of moved on from the firm, and we'll talk a little bit about what he was doing in the latter years of his life. You know, how did you know, how did you sort of honor his legacy?
How did he stay involved? Well, David always had broad interests and one of the interesting things about his career is he's mentored and spawned many businesses and helped many businesses, from Mark Lazari to Tom Barrick to Mark's Stad to Way Jan Sean. There are disciples around the industry that have picked up some of his investing style in ethos and he continued to do that as he continued to have a TPG as a cornerstone. But he went on,
as you know, to be active in sports. And yes he had been an investor in the Celtics, but he did a typical Bondo thing. By the way, just the
nickname Bondo was different in the industry. He did a typical Bondo thing, which is he took on a problem no one else would bringing back a team indoors in Seattle, rebuilt an arena where he had worked as a security guard when he was an undergrad at university of Washington, and we were listening there to TPG founding partner James Coulter reflecting on the life and legacy of his business partner David Bonderman, a legend in the world of private equity,
who passed away yesterday at the age of eighty two.