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Lionel Pincus, Who Helped Bring Investors to Private Equity, Dies at 78

Lionel Irwin Pincus, who built Warburg Pincus into a leading Wall Street firm and played a role in changing federal regulations on investing, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.

In the 1960s, Mr. Pincus opened Lionel I. Pincus & Company, his own financial consultancy. Soon after, he and Eric Warburg, who had set up the merchant bank E. M. Warburg & Company, merged their firms, and over the years, they made hundreds of successful investments in companies, including 20th Century Fox, Humana, Mattel and Mellon Bank.

Mr. Pincus’s son Matthew confirmed his father’s death of natural causes after a long illness. Mr. Pincus had been suffering from cancer and its aftereffects for the last three years.

After Mr. Pincus’s condition worsened a few years ago, Matthew and another son, Henry, were named his guardians. Shortly before Mr. Pincus died, they settled a legal dispute with his companion, Princess Firyal of Jordan, over real estate and other assets, sources close to the negotiations said...
Read entire article at NYT