Richard Beattie, Who Helped Pioneer Private Equity Takeovers, Dies at 86

[ad_1] Richard Beattie, a mergers lawyer who helped pioneer non-public fairness takeovers — work that was immortalized within the much-lauded guide “Barbarians on the Gate” — and who served in Washington and New York Metropolis authorities, died on Friday at his house in Manhattan. He was 86.

His daughter Lisa Beattie Frelinghuysen mentioned the trigger was most cancers.

Over almost six a long time on the white-shoe New York agency Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, the soft-spoken Mr. Beattie — Dick, as he was extensively recognized — grew to become certainly one of Wall Road’s most-sought company advisers.

He helped put collectively AOL’s $165 billion takeover of Time Warner in 2001 and JPMorgan Chase’s $58 billion acquisition of Financial institution One in 2004, and suggested the board of the insurer American Worldwide Group on its $85 billion federal bailout in the course of the 2008 monetary disaster.

He went on to function Simpson Thacher’s chairman from 1991 to 2004 and as senior chairman till his dying.

However his earliest and most enduring declare to fame was within the late Sixties, when he presciently acknowledged that non-public fairness companies — company takeover artists who used debt to purchase corporations — would change into a serious power on Wall Road.

As a younger affiliate, Mr. Beattie was launched to Henry R. Kravis, who would go on to be one of many high names in leveraged buyouts. Mr. Beattie grew to become Mr. Kravis’s go-to counsel on ever-larger takeovers, culminating within the $25 billion takeover of RJR Nabisco, accomplished in 1989, that was chronicled by the journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar within the guide “Barbarians on the Gate,” printed that yr. For a decade, the transaction held the report as the largest leveraged buyout.

Mr. Beattie was featured closely within the guide, negotiating finer authorized factors for KKR late into the evening — at one level, he fell asleep, sprawled out on the ground of one other legislation agency’s workplace — and looking for out intelligence on a rival bid for Nabisco.

“Dick was all the time by our aspect,” Mr. Kravis, who as soon as tried to lure Mr. Beattie to KKR, mentioned in an interview.

He was additionally deeply concerned in authorities and philanthropic work. He took a break from company legislation within the late Nineteen Seventies to work in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, changing into normal counsel for what was then referred to as the Division of Well being, Training and Welfare (now the Division of Well being and Human Companies).

After rejoining Simpson Thacher, Mr. Beattie served on the New York Metropolis Board of Training and based a nonprofit to assist town’s public colleges.

“I’ve been very lucky to maneuver throughout the public sector and the non-public sector,” he informed the journal The American Lawyer in 2011. “When you change into profitable, it’s vital to present again.”

Richard Irwin Beattie Jr. was born on March 24, 1939, in New York Metropolis to Richard Sr., a photographer, and Ruth Beattie. He grew up in Rye, N.Y., the place he performed quarterback in highschool.

Enrolling in Dartmouth, he grew to become the primary in his household to attend faculty, based on his daughter Ms. Frelinghuysen. After he graduated in 1961, he joined the Marines for 4 years, changing into the pilot of a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk assault plane. He was referred to as “Night time Fighter,” Ms. Frelinghuysen mentioned, due to his willingness to volunteer for nighttime missions.

In the midst of his navy service, in 1963, he married Diana Lewis. Two years later, he enrolled within the College of Pennsylvania’s legislation faculty. Whereas finding out for his diploma, his daughters Lisa and Nina had been born.

Becoming a member of Simpson Thacher after graduating in 1968, Mr. Beattie shortly grew to become concerned within the nascent enterprise of company takeovers. The following yr, he met Mr. Kravis, then a star banker at Bear Stearns.

When Mr. Kravis, collectively together with his cousin George R. Roberts and Jerome Kohlberg, broke away from Bear Stearns to kind KKR in 1976, Mr. Beattie continued to advise him on offers. Within the course of, Mr. Beattie helped flip Simpson Thacher right into a legislation agency of selection for personal fairness financiers, securing different purchasers like Blackstone, Stephen A. Schwarzman’s agency.

Purchasers and colleagues described Mr. Beattie as a steadying presence on the negotiating desk, one who by no means raised his voice in anger. He later served on a number of boards, together with these of Harley-Davidson and the funding financial institution Evercore, which certainly one of its founders, Roger Altman, a longtime good friend of Mr. Beattie’s, ran out of Simpson Thacher’s Manhattan workplace in its early days.

“He commanded respect, with a relaxed mind and judgment,” mentioned Ralph L. Schlosstein, a good friend and fellow former Carter administration official who later helped discovered the money-management agency BlackRock and who served as co-chairman and co-chief govt of Evercore.

Mr. Kravis, Mr. Beattie’s best-known shopper, additionally grew to become a good friend. The 2 shared a love of fishing and horseback using. When Mr. Kravis’s son Harrison died in a automotive accident on the household ranch in Colorado in 1991, Mr. Beattie flew with him to convey the physique house.

“He was there the entire manner with me,” Mr. Kravis recalled. “When he was a good friend, he was a good friend.”

Past company legislation, Mr. Beattie took a eager curiosity in authorities and schooling. On the Division of Well being, Training and Welfare, the place he labored from 1977 to 1979, he centered on civil rights issues and helped create Title IX protections in opposition to sex-based discrimination at instructional establishments that obtain federal funds.

In 1980, he was referred to as on to assist spin out the Division of Training as a separate cupboard company; he labored as director of the transition below Shirley M. Hufstedler, who grew to become the primary schooling secretary. Many years later, he served in Invoice Clinton’s administration as a particular envoy to Cyprus.

Training was additionally a spotlight of Mr. Beattie’s philanthropic efforts. Within the Eighties, he was requested by Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York to hitch town’s Board of Training. In 1989, Mr. Beattie based New Visions for Public Colleges, a nonprofit that championed smaller public colleges in New York; its board was stocked with Wall Road leaders.

“Dick was passionate that public schooling was the supply of upward mobility in our society,” mentioned Mr. Schlosstein, who serves on New Visions’ board.

Mr. Beattie additionally served on the board of Memorial Sloan Kettering Most cancers Heart.

Along with Ms. Frelinghuysen, he's survived by his spouse; his daughter Nina Beattie; his youthful sister, Evelyn Lewis; and 6 grandchildren.

David Tatel, a retired federal appeals courtroom choose and one other Carter administration veteran, mentioned there was just one strategy to describe Mr. Beattie.

“The best phrase is large,” he mentioned. “There have been giants within the ’60s and ’70s. There are only a few giants left at the moment. Dick was certainly one of them.”