TPG’S UBER BOOB
PE giant puts Coulter in charge of tech funds
The TPG executive embroiled in the college admissions scandal is being replaced by a money manager who once bungled a golden opportunity to invest in Uber — costing his firm billions, The Post has learned.
The private equity giant has placed TPG Capital founding partner and co-CEO James Coulter in charge of a couple of tech-heavy funds previously managed by Bill McGlashan, the TPG managing partner charged in a nationwide college bribery scheme along with dozens of other wealthy parents.
McGlashan, who managed $13.2 billion in investments for TPG, stepped down last week after he was accused of paying for a fake athletic profile to get his son into USC.
But Coulter, who has historically handled TPG’s more traditional leveraged buyout business, is famous inside the $103 billion investment behemoth for having missed a no-brainer Uber investment back in 2014 — raising eyebrows over his new role heading TPG’s “growth” funds, sources said.
The notorious miss occurred after McGlashan and another TPG executive led an $88 million investment in Uber Technologies in August 2013, when the ride-hailing company was valued at a mere $2.75 billion.
As part of the deal, TPG could invest another $88 mil- lion at the same valuation in six months.
McGlashan pleaded with Coulter, who “dithered,” a source with direct knowledge of the situation said. The firm lost the opportunity as a result, this person said.
“Coulter treated Bill [McGlashan] like a step-child,” this person said, adding that inside TPG, Coulter is known as “Mr. Optionality” for not making quick decisions.
By June 2014, Uber’s valuation jumped to $18.2 billion, from $2.75 billion.
If Uber prices its upcoming IPO at an expected $100 billion valuation, that $88 million will be worth $3.2 billion.
TPG denies that Coulter was the man responsible.
Coulter, though he was TPG CEO at the time, was not involved in the decision to take months before deciding to make a second Uber investment, a spokesman said.
The missed opportunity is memorialized in the 2017 book “Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Com- panies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World” — although it doesn’t mention Coulter or McGlashan.
“When the time came for TPG to purchase its second $88 million allotment of Uber shares at the same valuation, the private equity firm … waited until the last possible moment before attempting to exercise the option,” says the book’s author, Brad Stone.
“Characteristically stingy about giving out Uber stock and diluting the ownership stakes of existing investors, [Uber Founder Travis] Kalanick declined the transaction,” the book says.
”We disputed the accuracy of the book when it was published and categorically reject this new information being purported by unnamed sources,” the TPG spokesman said.
Coulter will also be taking over McGlashan’s new Rise Fund, which focuses on socially responsible investments and boasts U2 frontman Bono as a founder.
The Rise Fund is in the process of raising $3.5 billion, but could see investors who have promised funding back out now that McGlashan is gone, source said.
New Jersey’s state pension, for example, has committed $125 million to Rise Fund, but hasn’t yet funded the investment. The pension did not comment.