Tony Soprano explains private equity. Bain Capital and similar outfits gave "Private Equity" a bad name. Bain Capital and "Private Equity" are now synonyms for Vulture Capitalists and Corporate Raider.
Funny word, bain. According to Wiktionary it means “straight, direct, easy to deal with”. However, there is an alternative form of the word spelled "bane" that means "a cause of misery or death; an affliction or curse". Me thinks Mitt erred when when he named Bain Capital. Or maybe the misspelling was deliberate.
Of course, there is a problem with the companies that get taken over. If there wasn't a problem, they would not be subject to take over in the first place. The mistake they make is in allowing these land sharks in the door. They would probably have been better off just shutting down the company. That way at they might still have their pension funds, and the US taxpayer would not have to be picking up the bill. How much was that bill anyway, Mitt, ol' buddy?
There was a movie a while back called Other People's Money where Danny DeVito was a corporate raider. In that film he claimed to be the stockholders' only friend. The company was on the skids and it was not going to recover. The best that could be done would be to shut it down and sell off the assets. People may not have liked him or what he was doing, but at least he was up front about it, not like that slimy Mitt Bain.
The title for the movie may have come from the book. From Scott.
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