Bain Capital

[Yonivore]

“So to repeat, this is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about.”
-- President Obama at a press conference in Chicago when asked about the misgivings of his fellow Democrats over attack ads his campaign is running against Republican Mitt Romney’s work as the CEO of private equity firm Bain Capital.

Democrats of all stripes -- From Commie Van Jones to moderate Democrat Cory Booker -- are taking exception to Obama's attack on Bain Capital. So, why did he double down by saying the above?

His first Bain ad talked about a steel company that was shut down after Romney left Bain but, while a major Obama bundler (now head of Bain Capital) was there.

His second Bain ad talks about an office supply or paper company that was bought by a Bain company AMPAD and shut down; AMPAD was and is run by another major Obama campaign contributor.

No wonder Booker and Jones, among others, are WTFing over his attacks.

[Yonivore]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/president-obama-bain-attacks-not-a-distraction-theyre-what-this-campaign-will-be-about/


The President explained that maximizing profits is a healthy part of free enterprise, but isn’t always good for everyone. “That’s part of the role of a lot of business people. That’s not unique to private equity, and… There are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries. But understand that their priority is to maximize profits, and that’s not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers.”
Exactly how is what Bain did any different than what Obama did with GM? How many dealerships were closed and their workers put out on the street because of that takeover?

[TeyshaBlue]

Exactly how is what Bain did any different than what Obama did with GM?

Hmmmm....you can figure this out if you really try.

[ChumpDumper]

Exactly how is what Bain did any different than what Obama did with GM? How many dealerships were closed and their workers put out on the street because of that takeover?Tell us how many.

[EVAY]

Since all of Romney's campaign rivals for the nomination talked incessantly about his Bain capitalist days (including the upstanding Governor of this great state) I think that you can count on hearing about it in the same vein from now until November, complete with clips from Gingrich, Santorum, Perry and Palin.

[TeyshaBlue]

Tell us how many.

I suspect infinitely less than a unmanaged bankruptcy.

[Yonivore]

Hmmmm....you can figure this out if you really try.
Well, other than use tax dollars to prop up a failing business.

[boutons_deux]

Romney Surrogate: Romney’s Experience At Bain Is ‘Fair Game’

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/05/22/488285/sununu-bain-fair-game/

[TeyshaBlue]

You're only looking at the front end. Now, look at the back end.

[boutons_deux]

Bain and Financial Industry Gave Over $565,000 To Newark Mayor Cory Booker For 2002 Campaign

Yesterday, Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker (D) attacked the Obama campaign for making an issue of Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital during an appearance on Meet the Press. While the progressive leader later backed off the criticisms, Republicans have been quick to highlight his comments as an attack against the idea that scrutiny of Mitt Romney’s record as a businessman is fair game.

A ThinkProgress examination of New Jersey campaign finance records for Booker’s first run for Mayor — back in 2002 — suggests a possible reason for his unease with attacks on Bain Capital and venture capital. They were among his earliest and most generous backers.

Contributions to his 2002 campaign from venture capitalists, investors, and big Wall Street bankers brought him more than $115,000 for his 2002 campaign. Among those contributing to his campaign were John Connaughton ($2,000), Steve Pagliuca ($2,200), Jonathan Lavine ($1,000) — all of Bain Capital. While the forms are not totally clear, it appears the campaign raised less than $800,000 total, making this a significant percentage.

He and his slate also jointly raised funds for the “Booker Team for Newark” joint committee. They received more than $450,000 for the 2002 campaign from the sector — including a pair of $15,400 contributions from Bain Capital Managing Directors Joshua Bekenstein and Mark Nunnelly. It appears that for the initial campaign and runoff, the slate raised less than $4 million — again making this a sizable chunk.

In all — just in his first Mayoral run — Booker’s committees received more than $565,000 from the people he was defending. At least $36,000 of that came from folks at Romney’s old firm.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/21/488002/bain-financial-industy-gave-over-565000-to-newark-mayor-cory-booker-for-2002-campaign/

=======

... explains why Booker is defending Bain and Gecko.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/president-obama-bain-attacks-not-a-distraction-theyre-what-this-campaign-will-be-about/


Exactly how is what Bain did any different than what Obama did with GM? How many dealerships were closed and their workers put out on the street because of that takeover?

ideology make Yoni, WC, etc totally blind.

false eqivalence

Bain is a LBO predator buying into companies for the overwhelming objective of making money for the private equity investors. They don't give a shit about jobs or anything else, JUST MAKING MONEY.

Now, how much did Obama make from taking over GM and Chrysler, AND how many jobs were saved?

Gecko says his predatory capitalist experience raiding/asset stripping companies qualifies him as business expert and to run the US economy. He would destroy Ms of jobs to make money for Wall st, etc. So his self-proclaimed qualifications and career are 100% fair game.

[CosmicCowboy]

If attacking Capitalism is what his campaign is all about then I say bring it on...

[boutons_deux]

Gecko has nothing else to run on but Bain predations.

He has essentially disowned Massachusetts universal health care

He can't run on his job creation in Massachusetts because, like dubya, he essentially didn't create any jobs.

He can't run on Repug successes of 2000-2008 because they're aren't any. He call dubya "Obama's predecessor" :lol

Gecko, like dubya, is a privileged non-entity, inarticulate, blatant liar/slanderer, empty man.

[boutons_deux]

If attacking Capitalism is what his campaign is all about then I say bring it on...

false equivalence

LBO predators DO NOT EQUAL capitalism

[TeyshaBlue]

Bain did handle venture capital as well, boutons.

[Yonivore]

If attacking Capitalism is what his campaign is all about then I say bring it on...
Even Politico -- while trying to spin this as a positive -- is scratching its head.

Obama's Bain mutiny (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4E0C4306-6547-47EF-BCAB-1137F1AD8030)

Buried in the article...


One prominent business official, who asked not to be identified, put it this way: “It’s demonization of capitalism. And that makes a lot of Democrats uncomfortable and Cory Booker’s one of them. … I think that anybody with half a brain knows that the story is far more complicated and, in fact, Bain and private equity generally have made some positive contributions.”

“You know, they’re known as a very good company,” one Democratic operative said of Bain. “[They] help a lot of businesses around the country. Smart Dems don’t want to be anti-business.”

[ChumpDumper]

If attacking Capitalism is what his campaign is all about then I say bring it on...lol talking point

[ChumpDumper]

Even Politico -- while trying to spin this as a positive -- is scratching its head.

Obama's Bain mutiny (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4E0C4306-6547-47EF-BCAB-1137F1AD8030)

Buried in the article...Ooohhh, unidentified business official.

Sick burn!

[Yonivore]

Ooohhh, unidentified business official.

Sick burn!
Van Jones, Cory Booker, Ed Rendell, and Mark Warner aren't unidentified.

Hey, it's Politico -- not exactly a bastion of conservative ideology.

[Yonivore]

Yeah, I'd say there's trouble in Lib City...

Spittle-flecked Chris Matthews is calling Booker a traitor. (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/05/matthews-charges-booker-with-sabotage-betrayal-124145.html)


MSNBC host Chris Matthews heavily criticized Cory Booker's defense of private equity as "an act of sabotage" and "betrayal" of President Obama.

"Whatever the intention was, he was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer in one appearance on 'Meet The Press,'" Matthews charged.

"Booker, supposedly a surrogate for President Obama — comes on the show listed as a surrogate, points out he's got surrogate notes in his hand, says he's been working as a surrogate — and then trashes the entire campaign by saying there's really nothing wrong with private capital."
If PrezBO is going to make Bain Capital the make or break issue of his campaign, it might behoove him to get everyone on board first. No?

[boutons_deux]

Newark Mayor Cory Booker ‘very upset’ he is being ‘used by the GOP’



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/21/newark-mayor-cory-booker-very-upset-he-is-being-used-by-the-gop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[Yonivore]

Newark Mayor Cory Booker ‘very upset’ he is being ‘used by the GOP’



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/21/newark-mayor-cory-booker-very-upset-he-is-being-used-by-the-gop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Boo fucking hoo.

But, I think "very upset" isn't quite as visceral as "nauseated."

And, in reading your article, it seems Booker is mad at the GOP for only talking about his betrayal of the Obama talking point. But, if you look, the GOP has no interest in what Booker said about anything else.

His Bain quotes weren't misconstrued or taken out of the context of his comments about his disgust over the attacks the Obama campaign was launching.

I don't know how it's being portrayed on the Left but, his walk back video is being called a "Hostage Video" on the Right because of all the obvious edits. I wonder if anyone has been able to decipher his eye blinks.

[Spurminator]

If Bain Capital represents the essence of capitalism, then hail fucking Karl Marx.

[ChumpDumper]

Van Jones, Cory Booker, Ed Rendell, and Mark Warner aren't unidentified.

Hey, it's Politico -- not exactly a bastion of conservative ideology.Nobody knows any of these people.

[TeyshaBlue]

If Bain Capital represents the essence of capitalism, then hail fucking Karl Marx.

strawish. Bain is what it is...a mix of undesirable and desirable elements of capitalism.

[MannyIsGod]

strawish. Bain is what it is...a mix of undesirable and desirable elements of capitalism.

Oh, I don't disagree with your second part of the comment but there's nothing strawish about his comment, IMO. CC made the argument so Spurm didn't have to set it up. :lol

[Yonivore]

Ten ways you know the Bain attack is bombing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/ten-ways-you-know-the-bain-attack-is-bombing/2012/05/22/gIQATlIGiU_blog.html)

[ChumpDumper]

Ten ways you know the Bain attack is bombing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/ten-ways-you-know-the-bain-attack-is-bombing/2012/05/22/gIQATlIGiU_blog.html)Well, when right-wing bloggers whine about it, it's probably working.

[TeyshaBlue]

Oh, I don't disagree with your second part of the comment but there's nothing strawish about his comment, IMO. CC made the argument so Spurm didn't have to set it up. :lol

Whoops...my bad. I cruised right past CC's set up.:toast

'pologies, Spurminator.

[Marcus Bryant]

Bain Capital never did anything wrong, or at least antithetical to the advancement of employment in this country.

Cory Booker is now a mere pawn for publicly criticizing the campaign which cravenly solicits support from the financial class it disparages in election season but supports otherwise.

[fraga]

2fJhF6uctfM

[Yonivore]

2fJhF6uctfM
And, it didn't work for them either.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm a cracker for Romney!

[boutons_deux]

Mitt Romney's Bain problem: private equity has bad rap with public

Mitt Romney is using his record as a job creator at Bain Capital as a selling point, but – even before President Obama's attack ads – the public isn't inclined to buy it, polls suggest.

A March poll by Bloomberg News asked the question, "Do you think private equity practices, which include investing money to take over companies with a plan to sell them later, are mostly good or mostly bad for the economy?" Some 52 percent of Americans said "mostly bad," while just 27 percent said "mostly good," and the rest were uncertain.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0522/Mitt-Romney-s-Bain-problem-private-equity-has-bad-rap-with-public?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2Fcsm+%28Christian+Scie nce+Monitor+|+All+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[boutons_deux]

Bain Capital never did anything wrong, or at least antithetical to the advancement of employment in this country.


wow, Never? you have all the evidence? forever?

An acquisition broker said the Gecko's word was useless in buyout negotiations.

He would make a high-ball offer to scare off other bidders, win the deal. Then start "finding problems" with the target to justify lowering the purchase price.

[boutons_deux]

Ten ways you know the Bain attack is bombing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/ten-ways-you-know-the-bain-attack-is-bombing/2012/05/22/gIQATlIGiU_blog.html)

bombing? wishful thinking by the right-wingers. Their boy Gecko ain't going nowhere.

[boutons_deux]

How Romney and Bain Capital Bankrupted One Firm, Fired All its Workers, and Pocketed $100 Million

In the 15 years Romney ran Bain from 1984 to 1999, 22 percent of the companies it invested in went bankrupt or closed within eight years, according to a study by the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the bulk – 70 percent – of the $2.5 billion Bain made for investors during that time came from just 10 deals. Four of those ended up in bankruptcy as well – killing jobs and jilting Main Street businesses. Despite that, Romney and the Bain investors fattened their Swiss bank accounts.

Bain’s handling of Ampad illustrates how the rich extract money from these deals and leave behind wounded workers and Main Street shops. Bain bought Ampad from Mead Corp. in 1992 and added SCM Office Supplies to the holdings two years later. Like many leveraged buyout deals, these were financed with loans secured by the purchased companies’ assets.

Within hours after buying SCM, Bain fired every one of its 350 workers in Marion, Ind. Bain, through Ampad, told the shocked and terrified workers they could apply for their former positions if they wanted them back – at less pay, fewer benefits and worse working conditions.

When Ampad went under, it owed $182.6 million to its suppliers across America. The bankruptcy left only $328,633 to pay nearly 1,300 unsecured creditors – that worked out to 10 cents for every $10 Ampad owed. That’s how a company liked Hometown Café & Catering, owed $600.60 by Ampad, got all of $1.14. And Hometown Café received that big fat check 11 years after Ampad filed for bankruptcy.

These Main Street shops and businesses are the heart of American communities, supporting the local United Way, Little League teams and Memorial Day parades. Debts never paid mean less money for them to hire their own workers, fewer dollars for them to contribute to their communities and a higher probability they’ll be forced into bankruptcy.

Bain invested $5 million in Ampad and took more than $100 million out, through numerous methods, including fees. That $100 million would have gone a long way toward paying the debts Ampad owed to Main Street businesses across the country. It wouldn’t be surprising if they felt a little like Romney and Bain robbed them at gunpoint.

But everything Bain did was legal. It’s Romney economics, working for the wealthy while double crossing Main Street.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155638

[Wild Cobra]

Only 22%...

Considering the circumstances, that's not bad.

What was the outlook of those companies before the investments?

[boutons_deux]

The point is that Bain ALWAYS rode off with $Ms, even $10Ms, while fucking suppliers and lenders (who provided the leverage for the buyout) with bankruptcy.

[boutons_deux]

And that's Marcus Bryant's "business ethics", if it's not illegal "wrong", business is perfectly OK fucking over anybody and anything. This is exactly why UCA wants regulations killed. Regulations limit, somewhat, UCA's fucking everything up.

[boutons_deux]

How the Corporate Media Obscure the Truth About Mitt Romney's 'Vulture Capitalism' at Bain

http://images.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1338569937_shutterstock97046045.jpg_64 0x428_310x220

The lion's share of Mitt Romney's fortune was made doing the latter through leveraged buy-outs (LBOs), a reality that Romney doesn't like to talk about on the campaign trail. Instead, he wants to talk about Staples, or Sports Authority -- two among a small handful of his venture capital deals -- and just about every mainstream media report elides the distinction between those very different things.

Perhaps the media, like much of the American public, doesn’t understand what LBO artists like Romney really do. Here’s a quick refresher.

Venture capital deals represent a very basic free-market transaction. Investors put money into a company at its early stages in exchange for a share of the company. If the start-up doesn't pan out, the investors lose their stake; if it grows and matures, they make a healthy profit. In venture capital deals, investors only make a profit when the company they put their cash into does well.

Leveraged buy-outs are a different creature entirely. LBO firms also deal with risky companies – usually those struggling to stay afloat – but they don't actually take on much risk themselves as they structure the deals so that they profit whether the target company becomes healthy and grows, or collapses, often under the weight of debt piled onto it by the private equity firm itself.

Here's how the deal works. The leveraged buy-out firm will put down a fraction of the cost of buying an ailing company. The balance of the transaction is borrowed, but the debt goes onto the books of the target company, not the private equity firm – the struggling company basically finances the lion's share of its own sale.

The target company's debt payments then increase significantly, and that debt service is written off, reducing its tax burden a great deal. This subsidy increases short-term revenues (at the expense of long-term debt) and that, in turn, is paid out to the firm's investors along with a fat stream of management fees that Romney and his partners skimmed off the top.

(The industry-standard structure of these deals is known as “2 and 20.” Management gets 2 percent of the capital they invest as a fee, and 20 percent of the profits that the fund realizes. That 2 percent represents between two to four times what the average management fees for a mutual fund usually run, and is collected regardless of how the fund does.)

This is a win-win deal for the leveraged buyout firm. A recent study by researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that the average tax benefit of these companies' increased debt-loads in 1980s equaled “10 to 20 percent of firm value,” which, as Mike Konczai noted recently, “is value that comes from taxpayers to private equity as a result of the tax code.

Then there was host Christina Romans saying that “what private equity does” is “comes in, cleans up a company, sells it, or moves it forward.” When Bain “cleans up” companies, more often than not it means looting pension funds, laying off workers, and saddling the firms with huge amounts of debt before flipping them.

A study by Deutche Bank found that 33 out of 68 major deals cut on Romney's watch lost money for the firm's investors. Its richest deals made up for the flops, however, and Bain's partners were guaranteed hefty fees regardless of how the businesses they “restructured” ultimately performed.

“The real complaint about Mr. Romney and his colleagues isn’t that they destroyed jobs, but that they destroyed good jobs.”

When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized — or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt — total U.S. employment was probably about the same as it would have been in any case. But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn’t destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class.

The Speculation Economy, that a survey of CEOs running major American corporations found that almost 80 percent would have "at least moderately mutilated their businesses in order to meet [financial] analysts’ quarterly profit estimates."

Cutting the budgets for research and development, advertising and maintenance and delaying hiring and new projects are some of the long-term harms they would readily inflict on their corporations. Why? Because in modern American corporate capitalism, the failure to meet quarterly numbers almost always guarantees a punishing hit to the corporation’s stock price.

These dynamics are epitomized by leveraged buy-out artists like Mitt Romney.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155689

[boutons_deux]

Only sheeple and bubbas will believe Gecko's BAIN plundering is excellent experience for a President, or how to get the 99%'s economy moving upward.

[boutons_deux]

Companies' Ills Did Not Harm Romney's Firm

Cambridge Industries, an automotive plastics supplier whose losses had been building for three consecutive years, finally filed for bankruptcy in May 2000 under a mountain of debt that had ballooned to more than $300 million.

Yet Bain Capital, the private equity firm that controlled the Michigan-based company, continued to religiously collect its $950,000-a-year "advisory fee" in quarterly installments, even to the very end, according to court documents.

In all, Bain garnered more than $10 million in fees from Cambridge over five years, including a $2.25 million payment just for buying the company, according to bankruptcy records and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, Bain's investors saw their $16 million investment in Cambridge wiped out.

That Bain was able to reap revenue from Cambridge, even as it foundered, was hardly unusual.

The private equity firm, co-founded and run by Mitt Romney, held a majority stake in more than 40 United States-based companies from its inception in 1984 to early 1999, when Mr. Romney left Bain to lead the Salt Lake City Olympics. Of those companies, at least seven eventually filed for bankruptcy while Bain remained involved, or shortly afterward, according to a review by The New York Times. In some instances, hundreds of employees lost their jobs. In most of those cases, however, records and interviews suggest that Bain and its executives still found a way to make money.

Mr. Romney's experience at Bain is at the heart of his case for the presidency. He has repeatedly promoted his years working in the "real economy," arguing that his success turning around troubled companies and helping to start new ones, producing jobs in the process, has prepared him to revive the country's economy. He has fended off attacks about job losses at companies Bain owned, saying, "Sometimes investments don't work and you're not successful." But an examination of what happened when companies Bain controlled wound up in bankruptcy highlights just how different Bain and other private equity firms are from typical denizens of the real economy, from mom-and-pop stores to bootstrapping entrepreneurial ventures.

Bain structured deals so that it was difficult for the firm and its executives to ever really lose, even if practically everyone else involved with the company that Bain owned did, including its employees, creditors and even, at times, investors in Bain's funds.

Bain officials vigorously disputed any notion that the firm had profited when its investors lost, arguing that a full accounting of their costs across their business would show otherwise. They also pointed out that Bain employees put their own money at risk in all of the firm's deals.

"Bain Capital does not make money on investments when our investors lose money," the company said in a statement. "Any suggestion to the contrary is based on a misleading analysis that examines the income of a business without taking account of expenses."

To a large extent, however, this is simply the way private equity works, offering its practitioners myriad ways to extract income and limit their risk. Mr. Romney's candidacy has helped cast a spotlight on an often-opaque industry.

In four of the seven Bain-owned companies that went bankrupt, Bain investors also profited, amassing more than $400 million in gains before the companies ran aground, The Times found. All four, however, later became mired in debt incurred, at least in part, to repay Bain investors or to carry out a Bain-led acquisition strategy.

Perhaps most revealing are the few occasions, like with Cambridge Industries, when Bain's investors lost. Lucrative fees helped insulate Bain and its executives, records and interviews showed.

Piling On Debt

Having spun off from a management consulting firm, Bain has always been known for its data-driven, analytical approach. Under Mr. Romney, the firm scored some remarkable successes, enabling its investors - wealthy individuals and institutions like pension funds - to collect stellar returns.

The companies that fell into bankruptcy were clearly the exception, and the causes were also often multilayered. Some companies proved too troubled to rescue, and others were hit by broader economic or industrywide downturns.

In at least three of the seven bankruptcies, however, companies appear to have been made more vulnerable by debt taken on to return money to Bain and its investors in the form of dividends or share redemptions.

That was arguably the case with GS Industries, a troubled Midwest steel manufacturer that Bain acquired in 1993, investing $8.3 million. The private equity firm took steps to modernize the steelmaker. A year later, the company issued $125 million in debt, some of which was used to pay a $33.9 million dividend to Bain, securities filings show.

The private equity firm plowed an additional $16.2 million into the steelmaker, but when the industry experienced a downturn in the late 1990s, the company could not manage its heavy debt. It filed for bankruptcy in 2001, but Bain's investors still earned at least $9 million.

Debt from acquisitions, usually part of a "roll-up" strategy of buying competitors, played a role in at least five of the seven bankruptcies The Times examined. In most of these cases, Bain investors garnered some initial gains before the companies faltered.

For example, after Bain acquired Ampad, a paper products company, in 1992, the company grew through a series of acquisitions. Sales jumped, but its debt climbed to nearly $400 million, and it found itself squeezed by "big box" office retailers. It filed for bankruptcy in 2000. Bain and its investors walked away with a profit of more than $100 million on their $5 million investment, on top of at least $17 million in fees for Bain itself, according to securities filings and investor prospectuses.

A similar phenomenon unfolded with DDi, a Bain-owned circuit board maker that expanded aggressively in the late 1990s. Sales soared, but so did its debt. The bursting of the tech bubble forced it to scale back. It filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The gains for Bain's investors easily exceeded $100 million. Bain also collected more than $10 million in fees.

Substantial Fees

The numerous fees collected by private equity firms have been a frequent lightning rod for the industry. First, the firms charge their investors a percentage of the fund as a management fee, meant to cover its overhead. During Mr. Romney's tenure, this was initially 2.5 percent and then dropped to 2 percent. Private equity firms also collect transaction or deal fees, ostensibly for advisory work, from companies they buy. These fees are generally collected for major transactions, like the purchase of another company, a public stock offering or even the initial acquisition of the company. A third fee stream comes from annual monitoring or advisory fees that portfolio companies typically pay to their owners, the buyout firms.

These fees can be substantial. In the case of Dade International, a medical supply company in which Bain acquired a stake in 1994, Bain and other investment firms piled up nearly $90 million in fees over seven years. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003 but not before it had borrowed heavily to pay $420 million to Bain and other investors several years earlier.

In 1998 alone, Mr. Romney's final full year at Bain, The Times was able to identify roughly $90 million in fees collected by the firm across its various funds, a figure that is probably low because most companies in Bain's portfolio did not have to file financial disclosures.

These fees covered Bain's expenses - like rent, salaries and lawyers - and the bulk of the remaining money was awarded to Bain employees as annual bonuses.

Bonuses were relatively small some years, like from 1989 to 1991, when the savings and loan crisis and other events slowed business. In that period, Bain managing directors made roughly $300,000 to $400,000 a year, mainly from their salaries, excluding gains from investments, according to an executive familiar with Bain's compensation. By the mid-1990s, as Bain grew, managing directors' annual incomes, again excluding investment returns, had swollen to $3 million to $5 million, mainly thanks to bonuses derived from fees.

Bonuses were not the main drivers of the immense wealth accumulated by Mr. Romney and other Bain executives. That came from their share of Bain's "carried interest," the firm's cut of its funds' investment profits, as well as the returns from personal investments in Bain deals.

Bain officials insist that fees were never a way for the company to garner much in the way of profits and pointed out fee structures for every fund are agreed-upon in advance by investors. They said fees supported the firm's staff-intensive approach to managing companies. Totaling up the hours Bain employees put into deals at standard consulting rates, they said, would far exceed what the firm actually collected. They said fees also covered the costs of hundreds of deals researched every year and not pursued or completed.

Investors have succeeded in the past decade in pressing private equity firms for a greater share of these fees. In 2009, a trade group representing institutional investors issued guidelines it believed firms should follow, including turning over all advisory and deal fees to investors, also known as limited partners. "The battle over fees is right now going in the limited partners' direction," said Steven N. Kaplan, a University of Chicago finance professor.

Bain began splitting some fees with its investors in 2000. In the firm's newest fund, Bain officials said they would funnel all deal fees to their limited partners.

Bain prides itself on the personal money its employees put into deals, saying its co-investment rate is among the highest in the industry. The percentage during Mr. Romney's tenure sometimes ran to nearly 30 percent but was usually less, according to records and interviews.

"We are collectively the single largest investor in every portfolio company and every fund," the company's statement said. "When our portfolio companies grow and perform, investors and Bain Capital do well. In rare instances when a business fails, Bain Capital employees share in the negative economic consequences of those losses."

Offsetting Losses

When deals sour, however, fees can provide a hedge.

Toward the end of Mr. Romney's tenure, Bain bought Anthony Crane, a crane rental company, which then acquired a slew of smaller competitors, financed by debt. But a building slowdown hit the company hard, and it filed for bankruptcy in 2004, wiping out $25.6 million from Bain's investors, along with $9.5 million from Bain employees. The firm, however, collected $12 million in fees over the life of the deal.

Bain officials maintained they still lost money on Crane because it also cost them $5.1 million in carried interest that they otherwise would have garnered from gains in the rest of the fund.

When Bain bought a troubled chain of maternity stores called Mothercare in 1991, its investors put $1.24 million into the deal. Bain repositioned the company and upgraded its merchandise, but the stores still struggled. Bain offloaded the chain in 1993 at a total loss, and the new owners put it into bankruptcy. Bain still collected $1.5 million in fees while it owned the company, bankruptcy records show.

In the case of Cambridge Industries, Bain first acquired a stake in the manufacturer of plastic automotive parts in 1995. Bain employees personally invested $2.2 million, according to bankruptcy records, alongside $15.7 million from outside investors.

Bain immediately collected $2.25 million from Cambridge as a transaction fee for investing in the company. Cambridge then acquired several companies in rapid succession, and each time, Bain earned 0.75 percent of the purchase price as a transaction fee. The rest of Bain's $10 million in fees came through advisory fees and payments for a debt refinancing completed by Cambridge in 1997.

By then, interest payments from the company's expansion were outstripping operating income. As part of the refinancing, aimed at lowering interest payments, Cambridge repaid $17 million it owed to a debt fund run by Bain. This involved paying it a $2 million prepayment penalty.

Cambridge was finally forced into bankruptcy in 2000, when Bain declined to provide the company with an infusion of capital needed to fulfill a major new order, according to former company officials. During bankruptcy proceedings, lawyers for some of Cambridge's creditors leveled scathing criticism at Bain, zeroing in on the fees extracted while they said Cambridge was insolvent, as well as the prepayment to Bain's debt fund.

Eventually, Bain settled the dispute by paying $1.5 million to the bankruptcy trustee.

"We have been unable to identify what, if any, 'reasonably equivalent value' the Company received in exchanges for these exorbitant fees," Michael Stamer, a lawyer for the unsecured creditors committee, wrote to Bain's lawyers. "It appears, instead, these fees were nothing more than a device used by Bain to provide a return on its equity."

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