Black History Month: Reginald Lewis - Wall Street's First Black Billionaire

Story below by: Black Entrepreneur Profile
Written by: Errol I. Mars

Name: Reginald F. Lewis

Born: December 7, 1942, Baltimore, Maryland

Died: January 19, 1993

Company: TLC Beatrice

Industry: Manufacturing

Position: Chairman/CEO

Country: United States

Reginald F. Lewis is the founder of TLC Group (1983), a venture capital firm which acquired Beatrice International Foods for $985 million in 1987 in a deal partly financed through Mike Milken of the maverick investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert. Creating TLC Beatrice International, a snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate that was the largest black-owned and black-managed business in the U.S.

In 1987 TLC became the first black owned company to have revenues over $1 billion when it's revenue for that year topped $1.8 billion.

At its peak in 1996, TLC Beatrice had sales of $2.2 billion and was number 512 on Fortune magazine's list of 1,000 largest companies.

Recruited to a top New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP immediately after law school, Lewis left to start his own firm two years later. After 15 years as a corporate lawyer with his own practice, Lewis creating TLC Group L.P.

His first major deal was the purchase of the McCall Pattern Company, a home sewing pattern business for $22.5 million. Lewis learned from a Fortune magazine article that one of the Norton Simon companies that Esmark planned to divest was McCall Pattern Company, a maker of home sewing patterns founded in 1870. With fewer and fewer people sewing at home, McCall was seemingly on the decline--though it had posted profits of $6 million in 1983 on sales of $51.9 million. At the time, McCall was number two in its industry, holding 29.7 percent of the market, compared to industry leader Simplicity Patterns with 39.4 percent.

He managed to negotiate the price down and then raised $1 million dollars himself from family and friends and borrowed the rest from institutional investors and investment banking firm First Boston Corp.

Within one year, he turned the company around by freeing up capital tied in fixed assets such as building and machinery, finding a new use for machinery during downtime by manufacturing greeting cards and he the started to recruit managers from rival companies. By containing costs, improving quality, beginning to export to China, emphasizing new product introductions. This combination led to the company's most profitable year in its history. With the addition of McCall real estate worth an estimated $6 million that they retained ownership of, he later sold the company at a trememdous profit for investors a 90-1 return. Lewis's share was 81.7 percent of the $90 million.