David Bonderman, whose global investment firm TPG has been a major player in media and entertainment, died today at 82.
A joint statement issued by TPG, Wildcat Capital Management (Bonderman’s family office), and the Seattle Kraken, the NHL’s newest expansion franchise which he acquired in 2018, said the billionaire investor known as “Bondo” passed away Wednesday surrounded by family and friends.
An L.A. native who studied at the University of Washington and Harvard Law School, Bonderman founded TPG (formerly called Texas Pacific Group) in 1993 with Jim Coulter and Bill Price, growing it into a publicly traded global alternative asset manager with nearly $240 billion of assets under management and 28 offices around the world.
The firm’s highest-profile entertainment venture was its 13-year partnership with CAA. It exited in 2023, selling its majority stake to Artémis, the Pinault family’s investment company, for a pricetag said to be in the $7 billion range.
TPG’s real estate arm acquired leading sound stage owner Cinespace Studios in 2021. In 2022, it acquired Germany’s Studio Babelsburg.
TPG acquired Entertainment Partners in 2019.
In 2024, the PE firm bought AT&T’s 70% interest in satellite broadcaster DirecTV, which it recently tried to merge with Dish before scrapping that deal amid protests by bondholders.
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An early investor in Spotify, Fandom and Goal.com, TPG has most recently been building a new talent-centric entertainment company it calls Initial Group. In October, it acquired leading Hollywood literary management firm Grandview and combined under the banner of Untitled Entertainment, which it acquired this past June.
Way back in 2004, TPG was part of a consortium with Sony and Comcast to acquire MGM. In 2006, it led a group taking Spanish-language broadcaster Univision private.
The father of five and grandfather of three served a stint in Washington, D.C. as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division from 1968 to 1969 under President Lyndon Johnson. He joined the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in antitrust, securities law, corporate law, bankruptcy, and historic preservation. Near the end of his tenure at Arnold & Porter, Bonderman successfully represented Raymond Dirks before the U.S. Supreme Court in one of the most important insider trading cases in history, Dirks v. Securities and Exchange Commission.
He went on to manage the family investment business of Robert Bass based in Fort Worth, where he met Jim Coulter, his business and investing partner for more than 38 years. In 1992 they left Bass and made a successful bid to acquire Continental Airlines out of bankruptcy, founding TPG the following year.
“David built an astonishingly broad and diverse resume of investments and was the architect of some of the most well-known, complex, and innovative transactions in the history of private equity. Throughout David’s career, there were few industries he didn’t touch and explore,” the joint statement said.
Passionate about music and sports, he was a member of the Board of Directors and a strong financial supporter of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2018, Bonderman returned to Seattle, where he had worked as a security guard at the Space Needle while in college, and led the effort to bring the Seattle Kraken to the city.
The Kraken played their inaugural season in 2021 and are now in their fourth season.
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