Nicholas C. "Nick" Forstmann (1947 – 2001) was one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company

Forstmann Little & Company

Forstmann, Little & Company is a private equity firm, specializing in leveraged buyouts . At its peak in the late 1990s, Forstmann Little was among the largest private equity firms globally...

, a private equity

Private equity

Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....

 firm.

After attending The Lawrenceville School, Nicholas Forstmann graduated from Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

 in 1969, and began working at the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. In 1975, Nicholas Forstmann joined Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

KKR & Co. L.P. is an American-based global private equity firm, specializing in leveraged buyouts, based in New York. The firm sponsors and manages private equity investment funds. Since its inception, the firm has completed over $400 billion of private equity transactions and was a pioneer in...

, a company with which he would later develop a rivalry. He founded Forstmann Little with his older brother, Ted

Theodore J. Forstmann

Theodore Joseph "Ted" Forstmann   was one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm, and chairman and CEO of IMG, a global sports and media company. A member of the Republican Party, Forstman was a philanthropist...

, and Brian Little

William Brian Little

William Brian Little , known as Brian Little, was one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm. He graduated from Colgate University in 1964, and he later served as the chairman of the Board of Trustees. An art building at Colgate was named Little Hall after...

, in 1978. Nicholas Forstmann's second brother, J. Anthony Forstmann, founded
ForstmannLeff.

Forstmann served on the advisory boards of Georgetown University and Marymount College

Marymount College

"Marymount College" may refer to:* Marymount College, a Roman Catholic school located in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia* Marymount College, a Roman Catholic school located in Adelaide, South Australia...

. He also served as the vice chairman of 1996 Vice President

Vice President of the United States

The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

ial candidate Jack Kemp

Jack Kemp

Jack French Kemp was an American politician and a collegiate and professional football player. A Republican, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms as a congressman for Western New York's 31st...

's Empower America, a free market

Free market

A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

 advocacy group

Advocacy group

Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...

.

He also played a leading role in Forstmann Little's bid to acquire RJR Nabisco

RJR Nabisco

RJR Nabisco, Inc., was an American conglomerate formed in 1985 by the merger of Nabisco Brands and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. RJR Nabisco was purchased in 1988 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co...

. Forstmann was featured in the book about the bidding war, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is a 1990 book about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of articles written by the authors for The Wall Street Journal...

, and was portrayed in the subsequent film

Barbarians at the Gate (film)

Barbarians at the Gate is a television movie based upon the book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.The film was directed by Glenn Jordan and written by Larry Gelbart. It stars James Garner as F...

 by actor Joseph Kell.

Nicholas Forstmann was a devout Roman Catholic, and helped form the Inner-City Scholarship Fund of the Archdiocese of New York. He was leading contributor to the Republican Party, which he supported as a social and fiscal conservative.

He died in 2001 of small-cell lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

, aged 53.