Pittsburgh Steelers minority owner and founder and CEO of LendingTree Doug Lebda has died in an ATV accident over the weekend. He was 55.
The company confirmed Lebda’s death on Monday. Lebda he died on Sunday after the fatal ATV crash happened on a family farm in North Carolina.
Details about the crash were not made available.
“Doug was a visionary leader whose relentless drive, innovation and passion transformed the financial services landscape, touching the lives of millions of consumers,” LendingTree’s board of directors said in a statement. “His passion will continue to inspire us as we move forward together.”
Lebda had been a minority owner in the Steelers since 2019, buying a 5 percent stock from David Tepper, who is now the owner of the Carolina Panthers. A native of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and graduate of Bucknell University, Lebda saw it as a prudent investment that connected him to the team he grew up rooting for in the Steelers.
“It’s a good investment,” Lebda said to the Charlotte Observer in 2019. ``But it’s also an amazing opportunity to be a part of what I think is one of the best organizations of anything in the world.’’
Founded in 1996, LendingTree connects consumers with a network of lenders on various products. The idea was born out of Lebda’s own struggles of getting his first mortgage, propelling Lebda to create LendingTree, which revolutionized the loan sharing process to allow banks to compete on a marketplace to offer consumers the best terms possible.
Lebda officially launched the company online in 1998 and it went public on NASDAQ in 2000 under the symbol TREE.
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