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TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Buyout Firm’s IPO

Jon Winkelried spent three decades at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., racking up promotions and almost $200 million in rewards during a boom period for investment banking. By the time the firm went public in 1999, he was a partner.

This week he’s poised for another windfall from a different corner of finance in the midst of record growth and profits. TPG Inc., the private equity firm that Winkelried heads, raised $1 billion Wednesday in an initial public offering that valued the company at $9 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings. The shares rose more than 15% to $34 in New York on Thursday.

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

The IPO reveals in greater detail how Winkelried rode back-to-back waves of hot sectors in finance. When he quit Goldman in 2009, he’d collected at least $196 million in cash and equity. 

“There wasn’t a timing aspect to my rationale for joining TPG,” Winkelried, 62, said in an interview. “I thought TPG was a great franchise. I knew it very well from my days at Goldman Sachs. I was ready to take on another challenge.”

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

It’s been a lucrative decision since he joined in 2015. Last year, the chief executive officer collected $87 million from the Fort Worth, Texas-based company, most of it in the form of distributions on partnership interests he’s been granted over the years.

A spokeswoman for TPG declined to comment on the numbers.

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

Potentially more significant is the value of his equity in the firm. Along with co-founders David Bonderman, 79, Jim Coulter, 62, and other senior leaders, he shares a 51% economic interest in TPG, a stake that will be worth billions. 

Even in a richly valued market, private equity has been on a tear. A Bloomberg index of private equity managers soared 74% last year -- almost triple the S&P 500’s return -- on surging profits and record amounts of assets under management. TPG’s assets totaled $109 billion as of Sept. 30, up 21% from 2020, according to the company’s prospectus. 

Founded as Texas Pacific Group, TPG is one of the last big private equity companies to go public. Its listing follows that of KKR & Co., Carlyle Group Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc., whose IPOs similarly helped billionaire founders such as Henry Kravis, David Rubenstein and Leon Black wring more money from their alternative-investment firms. 

It’s also helping those charged with running the companies. Blackstone Inc. President Jon Gray, for example, received $123 million in cash and equity in 2020, the last full year for which the firm has disclosed compensation. His Blackstone stake is valued at $5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

Though carry and bonuses provide a steady stream of money, going public allows executives and founders an easier way to cash out shares that could be worth multiples of their annual haul from compensation. 

Another potential source of cash for TPG’s top partners is a maneuver known as a tax receivable agreement. Because of quirks in how the tax code treats asset transfers, TPG’s public offering allows it to minimize taxes on its assets in the future. It plans to give approximately 85% of those savings -- estimated by the company at $1.4 billion -- to TPG’s pre-IPO owners, according to filings.

TPG’s Jon Winkelried Tops Goldman Riches With Firm’s IPO

The technique has been used by dozens of companies going public in recent years -- including Blackstone in 2007 -- and is especially popular with private equity firms.  

For Winkelried, his second act as a buyout tycoon comes as a surprise to those who best remember him for his sudden retirement from Goldman at the apparent peak of his career.

After starting at Goldman straight out of the University of Chicago, Winkelried rose through the ranks in various divisions, including investment banking and leveraged finance. He eventually landed in London, where he co-led the bank’s fixed income, currency and commodities business with Lloyd Blankfein.

Cutting Horses

When Blankfein became CEO in 2006, Winkelried was promoted to president and co-chief operating officer with Gary Cohn. The run-up in markets made Winkelried extremely wealthy, but the financial crisis and aftermath brought burnout, he later said.

In 2009 he stunned colleagues by abruptly quitting. As rumors swirled about his personal liquidity -- the bank had bought a portion of his Goldman-held investment portfolio in 2008 for $19.7 million -- Winkelried retreated to his Colorado ranch, where he trained and bred cutting horses and competed in the sport that tests a horse and rider’s skill in herding cattle. 

His retirement didn’t last. He joined TPG in 2015 as co-CEO, after a few years advising its credit funds. Winkelried, who became sole CEO in May, has overseen an 81% increase in the firm’s assets and its expansion into climate initiatives like TPG Rise Climate, a fund he’s raising with his former mentor, Hank Paulson. 

“The key for me at the outset was to get to know TPG’s people,” Winkelried said in a 2015 interview. “Understanding the firm’s culture and how I can contribute to it was essential.”

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