Jamie B Coulter

Creative Culinary, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, opened the first Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon restaurant in North Carolina in 1989. Two years later Jamie Coulter, who owned about 100 Pizza Hut franchises, inked a deal to open additional locations, and in 1992 incorporated the company with himself as chairman and CEO. Lone Star went public later that year and began expanding. In 2001 Guy Adams, an independent shareholder in the company, waged a proxy war and unseated Coulter on the board following a report by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) detailing numerous questionable board practices. (Coulter remained with the company as CEO; Adams stayed on the board for less than a year.) Lone Star Steakhouse is now owned by Dallas-based private equity firm Lone Star Funds.