Look
Who Parks Their Cash At Bain Capital
Tuesday,
September 4, 2012 8:39
“If.. these institutions relish the
yields that Bain Capital generates by supporting start-ups and rescuing
distressed companies, 80 percent of which have prospered, then this money is
honest — and Team Obama isn’t.”
Democrats
convened in Charlotte, NC, will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is
really the Bain crime family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney
and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their winnings, evading taxes
and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts.
But Bain’s
private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of
individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for
President Obama’s re-election.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Bain Capital is one of the world's leading
private, alternative asset management firms, with approximately $65 billion in
assets under management.”http://www.baincapital.com/
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Government-worker
pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain’s economic stewardship.
New York-based
Preqin uses public documents, news accounts and Freedom of Information requests
to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following
funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain:
*
Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund ($2.2 million)
* Indiana Public
Retirement System ($39.3 million)
* Iowa Public
Employees’ Retirement System ($177.1 million)
* The Los
Angeles Fire and Police Pension System ($19.5 million)
* Maryland State
Retirement and Pension System ($117.5 million)
* Public
Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada ($20.3 million)
* State Teachers
Retirement System of Ohio ($767.3 million)
* Pennsylvania
State Employees’ Retirement System ($231.5 million)
* Employees’
Retirement System of Rhode Island ($25 million)
* San Diego
County Employees Retirement Association ($23.5 million)
* Teacher
Retirement System of Texas ($122.5 million)
* Tennessee
Consolidated Retirement System ($15 million)
These
funds aggregate the savings of millions of unionized teachers, social workers,
public-health personnel and first responders. Many would be startled to
learn that their nest eggs are incubated by the company that Romney launched
and the financiers he hired.
Leading
universities have also profited from Bain’s expertise. According to
Infrastructure Investor, Bain Capital Ventures Fund I (launched in 2001)
managed wealth for “endowments and foundations such as Columbia, Princeton and
Yale universities.”
According
to BuyOuts magazine and S&P Capital IQ, Bain’s other college clients have
included Cornell, Emory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame
and the University of Pittsburgh. Preqin reports that the following schools
have placed at least $424.6 million with Bain Capital between 1998 and 2008:
* Purdue
University ($15.9 million)
* University of
California ($225.7 million)
* University of
Michigan ($130 million)
* University of
Virginia ($20 million)
* University of
Washington ($33 million)
Major,
center-left foundations and cultural establishments also have seen their
prospects brighten, thanks to Bain Capital. According to the aforementioned
sources, such Bain clients have included the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation,
the Doris Duke Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation,
the Heinz Endowments and the Oprah Winfrey Foundation.
Why on
Earth would government-union leaders, university presidents and foundation
chiefs let Bain oversee their precious assets?
“The
scrutiny generated by a heated election year matters less than the performance
the portfolio generates to the fund,” California State Teachers’ Retirement
System spokesman Ricardo Duran said in the Aug. 12 Boston Globe. CalSTRS has
pumped some $1.25 billion into Bain.
Since
1988, Duran says, private-equity companies like Bain have outperformed every
other asset class to which CalSTRS has allocated the cash of its 856,360
largely unionized members.
Is Bain
really a gang of corporate buccaneers who plunder their ill-gotten gains by
outsourcing, euthanizing feeble portfolio companies and giving cancer to the
spouses of those whom they fired? If so, union bosses, government retirees,
liberal foundations and elite universities thrive on the wages of Bain’s economic
Darwinism.
If,
however, these institutions relish the yields that Bain Capital generates by
supporting start-ups and rescuing distressed companies, 80 percent of which
have prospered, then this money is honest — and Team Obama isn’t.
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