Leonard Green and Partners

Leonard Green & Partners, L.P. (“LGP”) is a leading American private equity investment firm founded in 1989 and based in Los Angeles. The firm partners with experienced management teams and often with founders to invest in market-leading companies. Since inception, LGP has invested in over 80 companies in the form of traditional buyouts, going-private transactions, recapitalizations, growth equity, and selective public equity and debt positions. The firm primarily focuses on companies providing services, including consumer, business, and healthcare services, as well as retail. LGP’s most recent fund, Green Equity Investors VII, L.P. (“GEI VII”), closed in 2016 with $9.6 billion of committed capital.

Leonard Green was founded by Leonard I. Green in 1989 after separating from Gibbons, Green and van Amerongen Ltd. (Gibbons Green), a merchant bank which he had co-founded in 1969 with Edward I. Gibbons and Lewis W. van Amerongen. The firm's eponymous founder, Leonard I. Green died in 2002, leaving the firm to be run by John G. Danhakl, Peter J. Nolan and Jonathan D. Sokoloff (who had been Green's bankers at Drexel Burnham Lambert and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette prior to joining the firm).

The firm's predecessor, Gibbons Green had completed over 29 transactions with an aggregate purchase price of over $3.5 billion from 1969 through its dissolution in 1989 and was among the earliest practitioners of the leveraged buyout and management buyout. Among its most notable transactions were the purchase of Budget Rent a Car (1986) from Transamerica in 1986 as well as the acquisition of Kash n' Karry Food Stores. The firm completed the 1982 buyout of Purex Industries but had to withdraw from the 1987 buyout of insurer Argonaut due to the stock market crash in that year.

The dissolution of Gibbons Green and the formation of Leonard Green & Partners is primarily attributed to the failure of two buyouts: Ohio Mattress Company and Sheller-Globe Corporation.