Not here to defend Romney, but how does this compare with results from other venture capital firms in the same time period. The business is high risk and losses are expected, but the wins are expected to be huge. I am not so sure a 30% failiure rate is all that bad in venture capitalism.
To be fair, Bain was better than KKR and Cerberus (the idiot private capital that took over Chrysler, put Nardelli the failed CEO of Home Depot in charge, and then converted Chrysler into a submarine company).
I believe the problem here isn’t that other firms do the same thing.
“Others” do lots of things.
The starkness of this is that Willard’s firm, with him in charge, used other people’s money to pay for firms in order to tear them apart for short-term profit, larding them up with a debt load they couldn’t carry. In the meantime, Willard waltzed off, pockets loaded, destruction in his wake. It was all about the short term interest of Willard and Bain. It wasn’t about the long term interest of the company.
Was it legal? Sure.
Was it ethical? I couldn’t do it. It treats people as less than human all too often.
Willard could do it. Could feel good about it. Desired wealth more than anything.
Each of us makes their own decision about things like this.
I think it is one more piece of evidence (as if we need more) that Willard is about Willard.