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What Was Eating Tom Lee?

Ever since the L.B.O. pioneer was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Wall Street has been buzzing—trying to figure out why someone who seemed to have it all would take such a drastic action.

What’s clear in the end was that Lee was a complex individual, like many of us, with demons and ghosts and behavior that was self-destructive.
What’s clear in the end was that Lee was a complex individual, like many of us, with demons and ghosts and behavior that was self-destructive. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
March 1, 2023

Given the shocking nature of the sudden death of Thomas H. Lee last week—by suicide, reportedly from a single gunshot wound to the head from a Smith & Wesson revolver—the paeans to the 78-year-old buyout titan have come fast and furious. He was found shortly after 11 a.m. last Thursday morning by his assistant in the bathroom off his sixth-floor private office in the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue, a skyscraper that Donald Trump once owned and that houses such tenants as Estee Lauder, the cosmetics empire, Weil Gotshal, the law firm, and Perella Weinberg, the boutique investment bank. Another buyout pioneer, Forstmann Little & Co., had its office on the 44th floor of the building once upon a time.