Also, it should be noted that Bain paid $75Mil for the company, invested something like $20 Mil in new equipment, and only made $4 mil selling it.
Not including expenses.
As I said, this is a MEDIA HIT JOB.
Some analysts say Bain should not be blamed for the company’s failure, noting that a wave of cheap imports forced nearly half of the U.S. steel industry into bankruptcy during that period. Another company set up around the same time, in which Bain took a minority stake, Steel Dynamics in Fort Wayne, Indiana, thrived.
“GS and Steel Dynamics were about as different as it gets,” industry analyst Michelle Applebaum said. GS’s core products were vulnerable to competition while Steel Dynamics became “one of the country’s lowest-cost manufacturers of steel sheet,” a product with more staying power. Steel Dynamics was also a non-union shop.
From this HuffPo story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/mitt-romney-bain-capital-bailout_n_1189227.html
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This is union babies crying for their overpaid jobs back:
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ON STRIKE
In 1997, with Armco’s pension guarantees set to expire in one year, the United Steelworkers local at the Kansas City plant was worried that GS was not setting aside enough money to cover pension obligations and other benefits in the event of a shutdown.
David Foster, the negotiator for the union, said labor talks were typically more tense at companies owned by private equity firms because the high level of debt left managers with less flexibility.
Contract talks foundered and the union went on strike in April 1997. The first standoff since 1959 quickly turned nasty. Workers shot bottle rockets at security guards, tossed nails in the roadways to flatten the tires of nonunion trucks and pounded on the windows of vehicles as they left the plant.
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Did the 750 who lost their jobs vote to decertify? Remember the plant that thrived, Steel Dynamics, is a non-union shop.