Bain Capital enriches the people who demonize it

In a September 2 article, “Bain Capital enriches Obama’s base,” Deroy Murdock writes:

As Democrats convene in Charlotte, they likely will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain Crime Family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their winnings, evading taxes, and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts. But Democrats will ignore this inconvenient truth: Bain’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base—including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election.

Government-worker pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain Capital’s economic stewardship. New York-based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts, and Freedom of Information requests to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain …

Murdock goes on to list the many public employee retirement and pension funds that have invested in and made money from Bain Capital.

However, when Murdock says that these funds “are the chief beneficiaries of Bain Capital’s economic stewardship,” it can be confusing to a non-economic reader, because the word “stewardship” makes it sound as though Bain is running those funds, the way it invests in and runs the companies that it takes over and manages. But that, I believe, is not what he means. He means that Bain sells shares in itself and that the public employee pension funds have bought shares in Bain.

Murdock also reports that leading universities—all of them politically liberal institutions which of course hire almost no Republicans for their faculty—have invested heavily in Bain, as well as leading foundations and liberal cultural institutions.

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LA writes:

Again, as is so many stories about contemporary politics, I can’t help pointing out the parallel to Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel Atlas Shrugged, in which the industrialist Henry Rearden is surrounded by leftists and members of the cultural elite (including his wife), who despise his achievements, tear him down, and seek to destroy him, even as they live off the wealth that he has produced.

Buddy in Atlanta writes:

You wrote:

[W]hen Murdock says that these funds “are the chief beneficiaries of Bain Capital’s economic stewardship,” it can be confusing to a non-economic reader, because the word “stewardship” makes it sound as though Bain is running those funds, the way it invests in and runs the companies that it takes over and manages.

Yes, that’s what Bain does—it manages funds. Murdock is right.

Bain will raise capital for a new fund—say, $10 billion—from investors, with which it acquires companies to turn around. It does this by asking institutional investors—corporate pensions, public pensions, university endowments, etc.—to make commitments to the fund. The investors will commit anywhere from $10 million to over $100 million. In this arrangement, Bain is the general partner and the investors are the limited partners of the new fund.

Typically, Bain will have three years to invest the $10 billion, then another seven years to turn the companies around and sell them at a profit. When the companies are sold, the proceeds are returned to the partners. At the end of the three-year period, Bain will start raising another fund, so that Bain always has new capital.

You wrote:

He means that Bain sells shares in itself and that the public employee pension funds have bought shares in Bain.

There are only a few private equity firms that are publicly traded companies, like KKR and Blackstone. This is not the case with Bain. It’s an employee-owned private partnership.

LA replies:

Thank you for this explanation. But I think you have confirmed my main point. I was saying, or guessing, that Bain does not invest in the pension funds, but that the pension funds invest in Bain giving it the funds to acquire a company and turn it around. And I think that’s what you are saying.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 07, 2012 11:43 AM | Send