Founder to Leave Thomas H. Lee

Thomas H. Lee plans to leave the $12-billion private equity firm he started 31 years ago to launch a New York-based investment fund, the company said Wednesday.

Lee, the 61-year-old chief executive and chairman of Boston-based Thomas H. Lee Partners, told the staff of his intention to leave in an e-mail Wednesday. Lee said he was negotiating separation terms with his firm and said in the e-mail his departure “is very friendly, and, I am sure, will portend years of joint and cooperative investment activities.�

Lee’s investments have come in a wide range of companies, from book publisher Houghton Mifflin to Warner Music Group and battery maker Rayovac. In what may have been the company’s biggest coup, Lee bought Snapple Beverage Co. for $135 million in 1992, then sold it two years later for $1.7 billion to Quaker Oats.

Last week, the company said it would join two other private equity firms in a $2.4-billion deal to buy Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ Donuts and two other restaurant chains that are being sold by their parent company, France’s Pernod Ricard.

However, some of the firm’s moves soured, including a $500-million investment in 1999 in Conseco Inc., an insurer that sought bankruptcy protection three years later before reemerging from Chapter 11. Lee also made a $450-million investment last year in Refco Inc., the commodities brokerage that recently collapsed.

Scott Schoen, one of three co-presidents at Thomas H. Lee Partners, told Associated Press that Lee planned to launch his own hedge fund. “We’re in the final stage of negotiating a very amicable separation,� Schoen said.

Schoen said Lee’s departure had been planned years ago, and was expected to be announced next month. However, the Wall Street Journal reported on Lee’s plans Wednesday, which the company then confirmed.

Lee sold a 25% stake of his firm in 1999 to Putnam Investments, the Boston-based mutual fund unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos.

The $500-million deal changed Thomas H. Lee Partners’ ownership structure from a proprietorship to a partnership.

Lee headed the technology lending group at First National Bank of Boston from 1968 until he founded his firm in 1974. He stepped aside from day-to-day management two years ago, leaving those duties to co-presidents Schoen, Scott Sperling and Anthony DiNovi.

Meanwhile, Lee, whom Forbes magazine ranked in September as the 258th richest American with a net worth of $1.3 billion, moved his primary home to New York.