Frist and his family control about 19 percent of HCA Healthcare, an administrator of more than 290 hospitals and surgery centers in the U.S. and U.K. The Nashville-based company employs 37,000 doctors and provides services to more than 27 million patients per year. HCA reported revenue of $41.5 billion in 2016.
Thomas Frist's net worth of $8.76B can buy ...
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The majority of Frist's fortune is derived from his 18.4 percent stake in HCA Healthcare, a publicly traded health services administrator. He controls the shares through Nashville, Tennessee-based Hercules Holding II, a limited liability company whose investors include the billionaire's two sons. According to HCA's proxy form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2017, Frist and his sons own 68.9 million shares of HCA. Frist is credited with all shares to reflect his status as co-founder.
HCA has more than 290 hospitals and surgery centers in the U.S. and U.K. and its 27,000 active physicians serve more than 27 million patients, according to the company's website.
Frist also has personal investments comprised of HCA share sales and dividends, including a one-year payout of more than $500 million in 2012. Ed Fishbough, a spokesman for HCA, confirmed Frist's HCA holdings and said Frist's holdings outside of HCA were valued at $2.71 billion as of May 6, 2016.
Thomas Fearn Frist Jr. was born on Aug. 12, 1938. His father was a cardiologist in Nashville. "Tom" got a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University before earning an M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine. He served as a military flight surgeon after medical school.
He founded Hospital Corp. of America in 1968 with his father and Jack Massey, who was an early investor in the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain and, later, in Wendy's. The company became one of the earliest for-profit health-care operators in the country.
Frist became president of HCA in 1977, and, a decade later, its chairman and chief executive officer. He served as the company's chairman upon the merger of HCA with Columbia in February 1994, and later as vice chairman, following the company's April 1995 merger with HealthTrust. He returned as chairman and CEO of the company in 1997, a role he held until January 2001.
In 2006, he helped orchestrate the privatization of HCA for $31.6 billion, then the largest leveraged buyout in history, with money from Merrill Lynch, KKR, Bain Capital and the Frist family. The company sold shares in an initial public offering about four years later.
Frist is the founder of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, a United Way offshoot that promotes philanthropy. He's also the chairman of the Frist Foundation, his family's Nashville-based charitable arm, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, also in Nashville.