Carl B Hess

Founding chairman and longtime leader of AEA Investors, a pioneer private equity company and a precursor to the leveraged-buyout giants of the 1980s. Growing up, he attended the University of Chicago lab schools. After earning a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth in 1934, he went to work for Brasco, a Chicago manufacturer of metal storefronts. His first marriage, to Juliet Forbes, ended in divorce, and his second wife, Desanka Pavlu, died in 1990. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Eric, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; a daughter, Safiya Bonaventura, of Aptos, Calif.; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. He became a partner before moving to the American Securities Corporation, which invested the William Rosenwald family fortune, derived from Sears, Roebuck. He was a director of the company when Siegmund Warburg, keen to expand his presence in New York, sat down to lunch in a private dining room in Rockefeller Center in November 1963 with J. Richardson Dilworth, the money manager for the Rockefellers, and George H. Love, the chief executive of Consolidation Coal and the Chrysler Corporation.