Theodore J. Forstmann

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Ted Forstmann

Theodore J. Forstmann (b. 1940) is one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm. He is unmarried, and has no children. Forstmann is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Yale University and Columbia Law School. He is usually known as "Ted" (occasionally "Teddy" to friends and family).

Before founding Forstmann Little in 1978 with his late brother, Nick who died of lung cancer, and Brian Little, Ted Forstmann was an attorney. 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 of the 2006 list, as his wealth did not keep up with the $1 billion cutoff for that year's list.

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 movie showed Forstmann as being a vigilant critic of KKR's Henry Kravis and his methods, which is believed to have some basis in fact. Forstmann's criticism of Kravis (and much of the rest of the financial industry during the 1980s) centered around the ills of junk bond (high yield) investing and their use to raise large amounts of capital. When the junk bond market later fell into disfavor as a result of scandal, Forstmann was hailed as having incredible foresight, as his own methods involved using more conventional methods of attracting investment, while at the same time still maintaining nearly the same level of profitability as companies such as KKR and Revlon, which built their strategy around high-yield debt.

Forstmann has dedicated significant personal resources to the cause of education reform, specifically, he has been a prominent supporter of school choice as a means of improving public education. 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 give their children the best possible education through attendance at a private school.

While already very well known in the business community, Forstmann came to the attention of tabloid readers when he dated actress Elizabeth Hurley for a period of time.

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