Nicholas C. Forstmann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicholas C. "Nick" Forstmann (1947 – 2001) was one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm.

Nicholas Forstmann graduated from Georgetown University in 1969, and began working at the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. In 1975, Nicholas Forstmann joined Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a company with which he would later develop a rivalry. He founded Forstmann Little with his older brother, Ted, and Brian Little, in 1978. Nicholas Forstmann's second brother, J. Anthony Forstmann, founded ForstmannLeff.

Forstmann served on the advisory boards of Georgetown University and Marymount College. He also served as the vice chairman of 1996 Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp's Empower America, a free market advocacy group.

He also played a leading role in Forstmann Little's bid to acquire RJR Nabisco. Forstmann was featured in the book about the bidding war, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and was portrayed in the subsequent film by actor Joseph Kell.

Nicholas Forstmann was a devout Roman Catholic, and helped form the Inner-City Scholarship Fund of the Archdiocese of New York. He was leading contributor to the Republican Party, which he supported as a social and fiscal conservative.

He died in 2001 of small-cell lung cancer, aged 53.