A Texan investor who helped the Bass family turn a $50mllion oil inheritance into a $5billion fortune has died.
Richard Rainwater had been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative brain disease,in 2009.
The 71-year-old was known for looking for industries that were out of favour and seeking out partners he could back to form companies to bet on a recovery.
The father-of-three passed away in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday.
Rainwater is also famed for helping former President George W Bush to earn about $16million through an investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team while Bush was governor of Texas.
It is thought that at least twice, following the oil price crash of the late 1980s and before the commodities boom of the early 2000s, he made a large and profitable bet on a surge in oil prices.
It was after he majored in mathematics at the University of Texas and while attending Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business that he met Sid Bass, the oldest of the four Bass
brothers whose great-uncle Sid Williams Richardson had made millions drilling for oil and natural gas.
Bass helped start Rainwater’s career. In 1969, at the age of 27, Sid Bass was given charge of the family fortune by his father Perry and the following year Bass invited Rainwater to join him.
Rainwater had spent two years working for Goldman, Sachs & Co., part of the time selling securities in Dallas. Bass eventually put Rainwater in charge of managing the family’s investments.
Rainwater and Bass bought shares of Marathon Oil in 1981 and made a $160 million profit, doubling their investment, when the company was later sold, according to the 2009 book “The Big Rich” by Bryan Burrough.
When Texaco Inc. became the object of takeover speculation in 1984, Bass and Rainwater accumulated a stake of almost 10 percent and ended up selling it back to the company for a profit of about $400 million.
“Richard was a great partner,” Sid Bass said in a statement. “We learned together and we invented as we went along. It was always fun and exciting.”