Romney, the richest presidential candidate in history, has a net worth of about $250 million and is a strong opponent of Obama. Reviewing his capital years will help us to further understand American electoral politics.
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Romney was born in a family with the same strong business atmosphere and political atmosphere. His father, george romney, was the head of an American automobile company, and served as the governor of Michigan for three times. 1968 ran for the presidency of the United States, but lost to Nixon in the * * * and the nomination battle within the party. His mother, Lenore Romney, is also running for the United States Senate on 1970.
From 65438 to 0975, 28-year-old Romney received MBA and JD degrees from Harvard Business School and Law School. This year, Romney joined the Boston Consulting Group after graduation. From 65438 to 0978, Romney became the vice president of Bain Strategic Consulting, another management consulting company. At that time, Bill Bain, the founder of Bain Consulting, commented on Romney as follows: "I am not very smart and I don't want to be an analyst. I am interested in becoming an entrepreneur. "
It turns out that Bill Bain has a good eye. From 65438 to 0984, Romney and three partners founded Bain Capital, a private equity investment company, and served as CEO. Many years later, the name of Bain Capital is closely related to Gome in China market. On June 22nd, 2009, Bain Capital acquired Gome for about HK$ 654.38+0.9 billion. 20 1 1 In August, Gome's share price climbed to nearly HK$ 4. If Bain Capital had been realized at that time, it would have earned about HK$ 4.5 billion with a return on investment of 249.45%.
When Bain Capital was founded, there were only seven employees, even if there were four partners. However, after more than 20 years of development, the company currently manages more than 65 billion US dollars of assets, and its business involves private equity, venture capital, listed equity hedge funds and leveraged debt asset management, providing private equity investment and additional acquisition services for more than 250 enterprises in various industries around the world. Headquartered in Boston, USA, it has branches in Shanghai, Hongkong, Tokyo, new york, London and Munich.
Bain Capital's best operation mode is leveraged buyout, that is, taking its own assets as collateral for financing and acquiring other companies, so as to minimize the cash expenditure in transactions and tend to achieve absolute control over the acquired companies. Romney once said: "Leveraged buyouts must be accurate, so I will not invest in newly established enterprises. Mature companies are more in line with Bain Capital's appetite. "
Bain Capital acquired American fast food chain giant Burger King in 2002, invested in Warner Records in 2003, acquired Canadian chain company One Dollar Store in 2004, joined hands with China Huawei to acquire American Internet company 3com in 2007, and became a shareholder in Gome in 2009 ... Bain Capital has invested in more than 300 companies since its establishment, realizing absolute control and intervention in Warner Records, Burger King and other companies.
Recently, Time magazine concluded in an article exposing Romney's capital years: 15 years as a leader of Bain Capital shows that Romney is much slower to seize opportunities and always looks for hidden shortcomings in every transaction. He listens to objections and will only invest if he reaches an understanding with his partners. He is very cautious, asking partners to pay close attention to verifiable data and refuse to make subjective judgments on business prospects.
In terms of business operation, Romney is indeed a rare genius. During his five years in Bain Capital 15, the company's annual return on investment reached 1 13%. 1990, Romney was recalled to Bain Consulting, which was facing financial difficulties. A year later, the company turned losses into profits.
From 65438 to 0999, the budget deficit of the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, USA was $379 million. In response to the financial crisis, Romney was appointed as the chairman and CEO of the organizing Committee. Here, he once again demonstrated the talent of capital operation, reorganized the organizing Committee substantially, increased fund-raising and cut expenses. The final profit of the Olympic Games 1 100 million dollars.
Advantages and disadvantages, right and wrong
Bain Capital is Romney's masterpiece and is often quoted by his supporters. Romney also told potential supporters how he helped to establish or rebuild Staples, Domino's Pizza and sports management companies during Bain, and created more than 654.38 million jobs. Romney believes that his employment with Bain shows that he knows how to promote the development of the enterprise. However, Romney's political opponents don't think so. They seized Bain Capital by the pigtail and attacked him, saying that he had made a fortune on the dark side of American capitalism. His opponent tried to fight back with his experience in Bain. Perry declared that Romney "made millions of dollars by buying companies and firing workers". Gingrich said that Romney should "return all the money he earned by bankrupting the company and firing employees during Bain" because he is a "corporate predator".
Romney called layoffs and bankruptcy inevitable products of the capitalist system, and said that in some cases, firing some people may save other departments of the company. Romney responded to Gingrich: "Doesn't he understand how the economy works? In the real economy, the success or failure of a company is common. "
A spokesman for Bain Capital said that the success rate of the company in promoting business growth and reversing the business situation is very high, whether in the economic boom or in the weak period. Opponents found a set of data showing that during the 15 years when Romney was in charge of Bain Capital (from the establishment of 1984 to the beginning of 1999), he invested in 77 companies, but by the end of the eighth year of Bain's first investment, more than one-fifth of the companies either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed down, and sometimes there were a large number of layoffs. There are also nearly 10% companies with too big problems, and all the funds invested by Bain are wasted.
During this period, Bain brought rich returns to investors, but most of them only came from a small part of its investment. More than 70% of the capital gains come from 10 transaction. More interestingly, among the 65,438+00 companies that Bain investors benefited the most, 4 went to bankruptcy court.
For a long time, the core competitiveness of Romney's campaign is that his successful experience in leading the company has made him the best candidate to reverse the economic difficulties in the United States. However, opponents' research on Bain Capital has greatly reduced this sales promotion method. Because Bain's investment company seems to be more likely to get into trouble than some acquisition companies at the same time.
With the same data, Romney's supporters also found reasons for their supporters. They think that some companies went bankrupt a few years after Bain helped them to go public or sell, and it is unfair to associate them with Bain. Others believe that Bain and its former leaders may still be responsible for failing to keep the company strong.
Bain Capital is well aware that their partner Romney, who retired more than a decade ago, will be censored and misinterpreted during the presidential campaign. Therefore, Bain's spokesman pointed out that the opponent's evaluation "used a fundamentally flawed method, unfairly blaming us for many things that happened when we didn't hold shares or control shares, while ignoring dozens of successful venture capital investments."