NEW YORK (AP) — Theodore J. Forstmann, a longtime Wall Street financier who was a major player during the wave of corporate takeovers in the 1980s, including the battle for RJR Nabisco in 1988, died Sunday at the age of 71.
The cause was brain cancer, according to a statement from sports marketing giant IMG, where Forstmann served as chairman and CEO.
A pioneer of the buyout business, celebrity bachelor and free market proselytizer, Forstmann cut the figure of a swashbuckling risk taker. But in buying companies, he tended to be more careful and conservative than his rivals. Famously, he backed down from buying RJR Nabisco in the late ’80s when the price got too high. His instincts turned out right. The winner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, struggled for years to wring profits from the company.
Forstmann was the senior founding partner of investment firm Forstmann Little Co., a big player in the leveraged buyout, or LBO, a deal financed at least in part with debt. The company completed dozens of leveraged buyouts of a wide array of companies, including Dr. Pepper, Yankee Candle, baseball card maker Topps, Ziff-Davis Publishing and IMG.
Forstmann Little, founded in 1978, would buy
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