James Coulter

James Coulter (born December 1, 1959) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the co-founder of private equity firm TPG Capital, originally known as the Texas Pacific Group.

Coulter was born on December 1, 1959, and raised in a Methodist family, the son of Shirley (née Nagler) and James W. Coulter. His father was a chemical salesman for Chevron. He is a graduate of Shawnee High School in Medford, New Jersey. He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College, where he was also a member of Alpha Chi Alpha. He subsequently earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1986, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar.

In 1992, Coulter co-founded the Fort Worth and San Francisco-based private equity firm TPG along with David Bonderman. With 14 offices in 10 countries, the firm is one of the largest globally with approximately $50 billion of assets under management. Prior to co-founding TPG in 1992, Coulter and the other co-founders worked for Robert M. Bass. Coulter joined the Robert M. Bass Group from Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb.

Coulter has been involved in some of the largest leveraged buyout transactions on record including TPG's marquee transaction, the takeover of Continental Airlines in 1993. He has been involved with TPG's investments in America West Airlines, Burger King, Del Monte Foods, J. Crew, Ducati Motor Holding, Gemplus International, MEMC, ON Semiconductor, Oxford Health Plans, Petco and Seagate Technology.

He is the founder of the Coulter IDEApitch at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (often referred to as NOEW). Winners of Coulter IDEApitch competition receive a $100,000 investment towards their next round of funding. Winners include Acrew, a video interviewing HR tech product (2017 winner), and AxoSim, a pharmaceutical research company (2018 winner).

Coulter serves as a member on numerous boards:

Coulter is married to Penny Saer from New Orleans. They have three children.