The Bain Capital Files

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/08/the-bain-capital-files.html

by stevewillensky • 14 years ago

31 30 14 years ago

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

There's a lesson this for me and my partners. Everything we publish to our investors should be written as if it will someday be published in Gawker. And every action we take in structuring our business, our relationships with our investors, and our relationships with the entrepreneurs we back should be conducted as if it will someday be published in Gawker.

This is nothing new. When I was studying political science in the early '90s it was called "the Washington Post Rule": a canny politician should never put anything in writing unless he would be comfortable seeing it on the front page of the Washington Post.

(Why the Post? Woodward and Bernstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President%27s_Men I have to believe the rule goes back even further than that, but presumably before their time it was called something else.)

MikeCapone• 14 years ago

Warren Buffett's been telling all his managers for decades that they shouldn't base their decisions on what is "this side of the line of legality" but rather on what they wouldn't mind "seeing printed on the front page of the New York Times".

I'm sure the idea's been around for even longer than that, though. I bet Benjamin Franklin (a publisher, among other things) must've had a choice quote about that...

expralitemonk2• 14 years ago

"Abstain from all appearance of evil."

1 Thessalonians 5:22 King James Bible

I'm sure if you dug around in Buddhist or Confucianist writings you'd find something similar. Being mindful of how your actions look is very useful in avoiding trouble.

jahmed• 14 years ago

Living in a world where so much more takes place online and data being relatively permanent if one was determined how do we extend that rule. At this point a whole generation is already out of politics from scandalous Facebook photos and suggestive texts.

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

My guess is that as those people come of age we'll gradually see a sort of silent consensus to ignore that stuff within certain parameters -- if they were a certain age or younger, say, or as long as no serious laws were broken.

It's happened before. Look at how society has evolved on questions of politicians' drug use, for instance. In 1970 admitting to have ever used marijuana would have been an instant career killer for a politician. By 1992 Bill Clinton could admit having used it, as long as he hedged the admission with a bunch of caveats -- he didn't inhale, etc. And by 2008 Barack Obama could openly admit having smoked pot regularly without any negative repercussions, as long as it was only in his wayward youth.

ck23• 14 years ago

I don't care if you are progressive or conservative, dem or repub, if you are running for president I want to see a full disclosure of your business and financial dealings, years of tax returns (which can be forged anyway because 3rd party cannot authenticate with the IRS) and even a drug test.

Yes, a drug test and full physical beforehand. This is the most powerful office in the land, not some book promotion tour.

JasonFruit2• 14 years ago

If all your candidates must be squeaky clean, you're probably ruling out some of the most able. The most law-abiding, unquestioningly tax-paying, physically-fit candidate is probably not the person who has the best understanding of and instinct for foreign affairs, the most ability to inspire, cajole, and back-scratchingly motivate Congresspeople to cooperate with important ideas, and the most ability to quickly to make difficult decisions in no-win situations.

ck23• 14 years ago

They don't have to be squeaky clean, they just have to have full disclosure.

Heck, look at the lineup before the final nomination this year - every candidate (and the final nomination) had serious issues and people voted for them anyway, so squeaky clean is not the problem - full disclosure is.

antidaily• 14 years ago

unquestioningly tax-paying?

jamesbritt• 14 years ago

If all your candidates must be squeaky clean, you're probably ruling out some of the most able.

If more people came to see that perfectly capable people are often not squeaky clean in largely irrelevant matters we would all be better off.

Imagine a country where politicians don't live in fear that the public might learn they sometimes spark a bong, or once cheated on their spouse, or like people of the same gender as themselves from time to time.

bct• 14 years ago

You really think candidates are (or could be) chosen based on anything even remotely related to those abilities?

adrianbravo• 14 years ago

Will what is revealed make a difference in how anyone plans to vote?

eupharis• 14 years ago

Perhaps not to you. Depends on where you stand on personal vs. political.

Personal: how much do your impressions of a candidate's personal qualities (trustworthiness, courage, honor, etc.) determine your vote.

Political: how much do your political desires, i.e., policies the candidates have pledged to adopt that will influence our interpersonal (political) lives (taxes, social services, regulations, etc.) determine your vote.

Because of your the question, I'm guessing your vote is determined by the political.

The most cynical about politics (e.g., all politicians are corrupt) tend to be the most political.

And vice versa: the candidate will choose the right thing to do, because he is so intelligent, trustworthy, knowledgable, honorable, etc., etc. It may not be what I think is the right thing to do, but he is so intelligent, trustworthy, knowledgable, honorable, etc., etc., he will know better than me.

I feel like Hacker News is probably dominated by political voters. But not everyone feels the same as Hacker News habituants. And to play devil's advocate, if I were faced with the collapse of the financial system in 2008, and I were told "Decide." My response would be, "Err." I might not want to be so political in my thinking. I might just want to choose someone who seems great and say, "Deal with it."

And of course, as with so many determinations made by us wonderful beings called humans, it is almost never an either/or determination, and there is a rich interplay between the two that is hard to fathom let alone to model. If you fundamentally don't trust a person, it won't matter how much their political agenda matches your own. Also, "the personal is political."

sailfrog2• 14 years ago

I agree with regard to full disclosure. The unfortunate reality is that what might normally be considered a past indiscretion can shred a potential candidate's chances at success, mostly thanks to the American electorate's unrealistic expectations. I guess it all depends on what you consider an acceptable indiscretion, but without full disclosure you really can't know for sure.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

That's absurd -- many politicians are attorneys, and are ethically obligated to protect the identities of their clients.

I have worked for a government entity in a policy making role, and one of my obligations was to annually file a detail of my investments, business dealings and other things in a manner that balances the public's need to be assured of my integrity with my need for privacy in my affairs.

Disclosure of medical data is an even more egregious ethical and privacy violation. Why should I as a political figure need to publicly disclose my use of narcotics to manage pain from a chronic medical condition? Why should I need disclose the use of drugs that imply a potentially embarrassing medical condition?

Medical diagnoses affect people's view of people. I don't want otherwise good people excluded from public service because they are HIV positive.

ck23• 14 years ago

You are entitled not to disclose all of that - you just cannot run for president with the finger on the button, command the military without congressional approval, and the ability to stack the supreme court.

It's a job application - for the most powerful position in the USA, arguably the world. I want a decade of financial history, credit check, drug test, last five places you own/lived, etc.

0003• 14 years ago

Soon private investors will have DRM over their audited investor reports.

snowwrestler• 14 years ago

Common advices from corporate lawyers is that the "e" in "email" stands for "evidence". As in: anything you write in a company email could one day show up as evidence in court...and from there in the newspaper. Here's a famous example:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6142843-7.html

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

I am totally not defending the guy, but the question I have is what does the average citizen expect a 'rich' person to do with their savings? Put them into a pass book savings account at Wells Fargo and get .7% APR interest with everything over $250,000 at risk? When you give your money to a venture capitalist to invest in the startups we read about every day it shows up on your tax return a "MayField Plaza Partners Equity Fund, LLC" or some such. And its not like naming those things are easy.

When I rolled over my 401k from Sun into a personally managed IRA with my broker we put parts into things like "Fidelity Large Cap Fund" or "Emerging Markets Fund" which were pretty opaque except for the prospectus that came around once a quarter. So I'm wondering what the outrage is here.

r00fus• 14 years ago

> what does the average citizen expect a 'rich' person to do with their savings?

Perhaps donate some/lots to a real bona-fide charity (this does not include your church - that's just influence peddling within your own community). Or maybe doing some angel investing in potentially meaningful pie-in-the-sky ventures?

Bill Gates is an example of a rich person doing something worthwhile with his money.

expralitemonk2• 14 years ago

Churches give a staggering amount of aid to the poor, with fewer strings attached than the aid given to them by the State.

If Mitt Romney lawfully lowered his taxes, more power to him. I use TurboTax to lawfully lower mine. The problem is with the laws.

cromwellian2• 14 years ago

I expect them to not to have loopholes they can take advantage of that ordinary citizens can't. For example, Bain converted fees for service into capital gains. A plumber or electrician can't treat his fees as capital gains, they are treated as income.

But if you're in financial, you can use all kinds of loopholes -- equity swaps, blocker corporations, fee-waivers+fund-investment in order to treat income as cap gains.

Then, if America votes in Romney and Ryan, we may end up with even lower capital gains rates, meaning financiers can escape most taxes, while ordinary people are faced with inescapeable income taxes.

I don't mind people investing in risky ventures, but they must pay taxes on their winnings like everyone else. And as Buffet said, the idea that higher taxes will scare away entrepreneurs isn't historically supportable. There are risk takers in every environment, it wasn't like before 1980 there weren't any entrepreneurs.

mudil2• 14 years ago

Perhaps it is not Romney and Ryan's fault. Maybe we need to simplify our tax system, so everyone pays equal share of taxes? But as it stands now, we have tax code of thousands of pages, so people in the know will figure out the loopholes. The analogy would be doing an SEO of a website. Sure I want everyone's site be optimized. But only people that understand all that is involved with the SEO process can properly configure pages and a server.

pc86• 14 years ago

I'm not a fan of loopholes either, but they exist and it'd be ridiculous to expect those able to not to take advantage of them. They'd just be burning off a percentage of their income.

Everything Romney's done has been legal, if impolitic. I challenge everyone acting like he's the antichrist to show us their tax returns where they made a gift deposit to the US Treasury, because that's essentially what a lot of people expected him to do.

The Bain Capital Files

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