From Jim Geraghty:
On the fact that one of his successors at Bain Capital, Jonathan Lavine, is a top Obama bundler:
“I have no problem with people who have differing political sentiments participating in the political process. I can say I know that the Obama campaign misfired with this attack. The GS Steel Enterprises events that are in question occurred after I left the firm, so that obviously is not a very effective attack. Although the whole idea that we’re going to attack people in private equity — who make over 100 investments to get results in any one investment — is a very strange course for the president to take. I realize, however, that the president wants to do anything he can to deflect attention from his record, and he will persist in personal attacks.”
On how a firm like Bain can make money while the companies it manages, such as GST or Dade Bering, can fail:
“With very few exceptions, the times you are successful in an investment are when the enterprise itself becomes larger and more successful. That is how our firm and other firms were able to achieve such success. There are a few exceptions where an enterprise is doing well, and realizing dividends from its success, but then it encounters a reversal in circumstances, and it no longer does well. . . . That tends to be rare. The people in my firm, in every investment we made, we wanted to make the business more successful. The cartoon caricature of investors coming in, taking all the money out of a business and leaving it bankrupt is, of course, absurd. The only way you make money in the industry that I’m familiar with is by making the business more successful, more profitable, not by making it less so.”
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