Bill Chisholm

The businesses in detail

How the main business makes money. STG raises money from outside investors into funds. The funds buy mid-sized software and data companies, often taking them private or carving them out of larger groups. STG reorganises each company and sells it later. It earns a yearly management fee on investor money, plus a share of each sale's profit. Chisholm's wealth is his share of the management company and of fund gains.

Biggest deals.

• February 2020: RSA Security from Dell Technologies for $2.075B in cash.
• 2021: McAfee's enterprise business for $4B and FireEye's products for $1.2B, relaunched together as Trellix in January 2022.
• 2023: SurveyMonkey parent Momentive for $1.5B, and Avid Technology for $1.4B.
• Funds raised: STG VI at $2B (2020), STG VII at $4.2B (2023) and STG Allegro II at $1.3B.
• Early signature deal: Information Resources, now Circana, bought in 2003 for under $120M and mostly sold in 2011 at a $1B valuation.
• 2021: Petershill, a Goldman Sachs unit, bought a minority stake in STG for $60M.

Career path

1. 1991

   Graduates from Dartmouth; analyst at PaineWebber

2. 1994

   Chief financial officer of International Sports Publishing

3. 1996

   Earns his Wharton MBA; consultant at Bain & Company

4. 1999

   Starts The Valent Group, a small venture firm

5. 2002

   Co-founds Symphony Technology Group with Romesh Wadhwani and Bryan Taylor

6. 2003

   Symphony buys Information Resources

7. 2014

   Buys McGraw-Hill Construction for $320M, now Dodge Data & Analytics

8. 2017

   Wadhwani steps back; the firm becomes STG Partners under Chisholm

9. 2020-2021

   Buys RSA, McAfee Enterprise and FireEye products

10. 2023

    Closes STG VII, its largest fund

11. 2025

    Wins the Celtics auction on 20 March; becomes NBA governor on 19 August

Teams and sports assets

Owns now 1

• teamBoston CelticsNBA · Basketball · USSince 2025 · controlling; exact share not published (NBA minimum 15%) · $6.1B valuation for 51%; last 49% due in 2028

Other investments and assets

• Companies and funds: His stake in STG's management company and funds, and under 15% of the legacy Symphony entity. He sits on the boards of STG companies Dodge Data, Cadmium and CAI Software.
• Property: Homes in Atherton, California (estimated at $16-17M) and on Nantucket, plus a recently bought downtown Boston apartment. Forbes counted about $30M of homes in California and New York.
• Family in the business: None found. He sat on the board of FAFCO, his father-in-law's solar heating company, from 1999 to 2024.

Giving and politics

• He is a long-time supporter and local board leader of Breakthrough T1D, the type 1 diabetes charity. His giving there passed $1M by 2020, and he and his wife received its Impact Award in 2016.
• He is a registered Democrat, per Wikipedia. He gave $8,100 to Rep. Josh Harder, a California Democrat, in 2018 and 2020.
• His wife Kimberly gave Harder more than $31,000 between 2018 and 2022.

How they run their teams

• He leaves basketball to Brad Stevens and business to Rich Gotham. Wyc Grousbeck stays as CEO and alternate governor.
• He attends home games and studied the league's labour agreement and salary-cap rules himself.
• In his first summer the team cut payroll to get under the second apron, a league payroll threshold. He acknowledged that fans read it as cost-cutting.
• He bid as an individual; STG has no stake. Rival bidder Steve Pagliuca publicly implied the bid leaned on debt, Axios reported.
• The Boston Globe reported he accepted a break-up fee of several hundred million dollars if funding failed by 31 December 2025.

What they have said

• He leads by consensus, but the final decision and the accountability sit with him as governor.
• He will pay luxury tax, but wants to keep room to add top players when they become available.
• He did not buy the Celtics to make money; he made his money so that he could do this.
• He wants to be a steady, low-profile owner whose job is to beat 29 others working under the same rules.
• His starting position is to stay at TD Garden and improve it; other sites come only if that fails.
• In 2014 interviews he said money is the easy part of buyouts and operating help is the edge.

Little-known facts

• Gregg Lemkau, co-CEO of BDT & MSD, which ran the sale, was his Dartmouth soccer teammate.
• He played on Dartmouth's 1990 Ivy League title soccer team and saw his first Celtics game at seven.
• The record bid was not fully financed at signing. Aditya Mittal first committed $100M, then raised it to $1B.
• Sixth Street, his third-largest partner at about 12.5%, also holds a stake in the San Antonio Spurs.
• The Celtics do not own TD Garden; Delaware North, parent of the Bruins, does.