Editing Reginald Lewis (section)

=== Career ===
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Recruited to top New York law firm [[Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP]] immediately after law school, Lewis left to start his own firm two years later. After 15 years as a corporate lawyer with his own practice, he moved to the other side of the table by creating TLC Group L.P., a [[private equity]] firm, in 1983.

His first major deal was the purchase of the McCall Pattern Company, a home sewing pattern business, for $22.5 million.<ref>Gavins, R. (2015). ''The cambridge guide to african american history.'' Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781316216453. </ref> Lewis had learned from an article in ''Fortune'' that the [[JBS USA#Esmark|Esmark]] holding company, which recently purchased [[Norton Simon]], planned to divest from the [[McCall Corporation|McCall]] Pattern Company, a maker of home sewing patterns founded in 1870. With fewer people sewing at home, McCall was seemingly on the decline—but it had posted profits of $6 million in 1983 on sales of $51.9 million. At the time, McCall was number two in its industry, holding 29.7 percent of the market, compared to industry leader [[Simplicity Pattern]]s with 39.4 percent.

He managed to negotiate the price down, then raised $1 million from family and friends and borrowed the rest from institutional investors and investment banking firm [[First Boston|First Boston Corp]].

Within a year, he turned the company around by freeing capital tied in fixed assets, such as buildings and machinery, and finding a new use for machinery during downtime by manufacturing greeting cards. He then started to recruit managers from rival companies. He strengthened McCall by containing costs, improving quality, beginning to export to China, and emphasizing new product introductions. This combination led to the company's most profitable year in its history. With the addition of McCall real estate worth an estimated $6 million that the company retained ownership, he later sold McCall at a 90-1 return, resulting in a tremendous profit for investors. Lewis's share was 81.7 percent of the $90 million.

In 1987, Lewis bought Beatrice International Foods from Beatrice Companies for $985 million, renaming it TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc.,<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/10/business/beatrice-unit-brings-985-million.html |title = Beatrice unit brings $985 million - the New York Times|newspaper = the New York Times|date = 10 August 1987|last1 = Hicks|first1 = Jonathan P.}}</ref> a snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate that was the largest African-American owned and managed business in the U.S. The deal partly was financed through Mike Milken of the maverick investment bank [[Drexel Burnham Lambert]]. In order to reduce the amount needed to finance the [[leveraged buyout]], Lewis planned to sell some of the division's assets simultaneous with the takeover.

[[File:Reginald F Lewis Office.jpg|thumb|Reginald F Lewis Office]]

When TLC Beatrice reported revenue of $1.8 billion in 1987, it became the first black-owned company to have more than $1 billion in annual sales. At its peak in 1996, TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc. had sales of $2.2 billion and was number 512 on ''Fortune'' magazine's list of 1,000 largest companies.