Theodore J. Forstmann

Theodore J. Forstmann (born 1940) is one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm. He is unmarried but in the late 1990s, he adopted two South African boys, Everest and Siya , after traveling to the country to meet with Nelson Mandela. Forstmann is a graduate of Greenwich Country Day School, Phillips Academy, Yale University and Columbia Law School. At Yale he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He is usually known as "Ted" (occasionally "Teddy" to friends and family).

Forstmann, an attorney, founded Forstmann Little in 1978 with his brother Nicholas C. Forstmann, who later died of lung cancer, and William Brian Little. Ted Forstmann's second brother, J. Anthony Forstmann, founded ForstmannLeff.

Forstmann has been on the Forbes 400 List of Richest Americans from 1998 to 2005, but fell off the 2006 list, as his wealth did not keep up with the $1 billion cutoff for that year's list.

Critic of junk bonds

He was featured prominently in the book Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, as he and his company attempted to acquire RJR Nabisco. In the subsequent film adaptation, he was portrayed by actor David Rasche. The book portrayed Forstmann as a critic of KKR's Henry Kravis and his investment methods.

Forstmann's criticism of Kravis (and much of the rest of the financial industry during the 1980s) centered around the use of junk bond (high-yield) investments to raise large amounts of capital. When the junk bond market later fell into disfavor as a result of scandal, Forstmann's criticism was seen as prescient, as his more conventional investment strategy had been able to maintain nearly the same level of profitability as companies such as KKR and Revlon that built their strategy around high-yield debt.

Education reform

Forstmann has dedicated significant personal resources to the cause of education reform; specifically, he has been a prominent supporter of school choice. He has also been active in the Republican Party.

He was given the "Patron of the Arts Award" by the National Academy of Popular Music at the 1995 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. In 1998 he and friend John T. Walton established the "Children's Scholarship Fund" to provide tuition assistance for low-income families wanting to send their children to private school.

Personal life

While already very well known in the business community, Forstmann came to the attention of tabloid readers when he dated actress Elizabeth Hurley following her separation from Hugh Grant in 2000.

In December 2006, newspaper reports on the inquiry into the death of Princess Diana alleged that U.S. intelligence agencies had bugged Forstmann's phone or plane and monitored his relationship with Diana. She and her sons were said to have planned to visit him in summer 1997, but British security reportedly blocked the visit over security concerns related to the bugging.[1]

Currently, Forstmann is dating Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.

External links

• 2005 Forbes 400 entry
• "Goodbye to All That" - 2004 New York Times article on Forstmann's planned retirement in 2006.