Remembering the Globetrotting Contrarian David Bonderman: Q&A

The private equity industry has no shortage of outsize characters — but few were bigger than David Bonderman, who died this week at the age of 82.

Bonderman co-founded TPG Inc. back in the early 1990s and along the way became one of the faces of a booming world of dealmaking, engineering takeovers of everything from Continental Airlines to Burger King to J Crew. Always an iconoclast, he specialized in transactions that few others would touch. Bonderman built the firm far from Wall Street, with offices in San Francisco and Fort Worth, Texas. He chose khakis over suits and ...