David Bonderman Quotes

I think that what we leave behind us is extremely important. I therefore spend a fair amount of time on the charitable front, and someday I hope to spend more time on it.

Every deal is a regulated deal. Regulators will tell you how to take your money home.

Generally speaking, you like to dance with the girl that brung you, and if you can’t sometimes you have to shoot her.

A good default, like Portugal or Greece, would be very good for the private equity business.

Don’t do something you don’t like. Look for a job that makes you excited to get up and go to work everyday.

When governments are selling, you should be buying. And when governments are defaulting, we should look at that as an opportunity.

Private equity capital in each of those markets Europe and Asia – while those markets have very different characteristics – fills a niche where either strategic investors or the public markets don’t go, or don’t want to go for some particular reason. I think that’s going to continue to be the case going forward.

The private equity world is a relatively small one. There are currently probably a few thousand professional jobs worldwide. In private equity, that’s probably about all there is. So in the scheme of things, the firms are all relatively small.

Prices are always lower when the troops are in the street.

Some of the very best private equity people, in my experience, are people who start out as stock pickers – people who really understood value, how to take a company’s financials apart and couple that with good judgment about businesses, macro trends, and where things are going.