What is Bain Capital? Bain Capital Review

Founder Introduction

William Bain

Bain was born in 1937 in Johnson City, Tennessee, USA, into a family of food wholesalers. In 1959, Bain graduated from Vanderbilt University with a history degree and won the honor of the National University of America. After graduation, Bain returned to his alma mater as the director of education development after a short period of work. Later, he joined the Boston Consulting Group. Within two years of joining the company, Bain had become the company's vice president, in charge of a quarter of the company's most profitable departments, and his salary also rose to six figures. On November 4, 1973, Bain and his colleague Patrick Graham announced that they would leave the Boston Consulting Group and plan to establish a new consulting company.

Mitt Romney

Romney graduated from Harvard Business School and Law School and joined Bain & Company in 1978. Romney is more familiar to the world because he was one of the 2008 US presidential candidates and the former governor of Massachusetts. Before entering politics, Romney devoted most of his energy to the creation of Bain Capital.

Company Introduction

Bain & Company, also known as Bain Capital, Bain Capital, and Bain Capital, has offices in Boston, Chicago, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Dublin, London, Munich, Melbourne, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, and Tokyo. In addition to private equity, Bain Capital also invests in various asset classes, including credit, public equity, and venture capital, with a total of approximately $105 billion under management.

Bain Capital currently provides private equity investment and add-on acquisition services to more than 250 companies around the world. Its investment portfolio includes LinkedIn, the well-known job recruitment website, Jet.com, the e-commerce giant, SunGard Data Systems, NXP, Sensata Technologies, FCI, Sun Telephone, Applied Systems and MEI Conlux.

Development History

Bain Capital's parent company, Bain Consulting, was founded by William Bain in 1973.

In the summer of 1984, in order to make up for the long-standing complaints of the firm's partners, Bain invested $37 million to establish Bain Capital, a limited partnership firm.

On September 28, 2007, 3Com announced that it had accepted a takeover bid from private equity firm Bain Capital, which would acquire 3Com for $2.2 billion in cash.

In 2017, Bain Capital acquired Toshiba's memory chip division for US$18 billion last year, their largest private equity investment deal ever in Asia.

In November 2018, Bain Capital Partners and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) announced the establishment of a biopharmaceutical company called Cerevel Therapeutics, LLC (Cerevel), which focuses on the research and development of therapeutic drugs in the field of central nervous system (CNS) diseases.

Investment Acquisition

In 2002, it acquired the American fast food chain giant "Burger King".

In 2003, invested in Warner Music.

In 2004, it purchased the Canadian chain "Dollar Store".

Around 2005, Bain Capital teamed up with the Blackstone Group to raise US$1 billion for Haier Group to bid for Maytag, a long-established American home appliance company.

In 2011, Bain Capital completed 33 transactions and deployed $15.3 billion in capital, including the $3.4 billion acquisition of Tokyo restaurant operator Skylark Co.

In June 2012, Japan's Sumitomo Corp. said on Friday that U.S. private equity giant Bain Capital LLC will acquire its 50% stake in Japanese TV shopping company Jupiter Shop Channel Co.

In August 2012, Bain Capital invested $20 million in a baby automation product manufacturer called 4moms.

In June 2014, Bain Capital will invest $60 million, while Och-Ziff and Tencent will invest $50 million each to support Citic Pacific's acquisition of $37 billion in mainland assets from its Chinese government-controlled parent company.

In October 2014, Bain Capital acquired 80% of the equity of Lionbridge Financial Leasing.

In April 2017, Bain Capital invested approximately US$816 million in South Korean biopharmaceutical company Hugel Inc to acquire a 45% stake in the company.

In November 2018, Bain Capital announced that its venture capital subsidiary, Bain Capital Ventures, had completed a $1 billion financing. They plan to use this latest funding to establish a new venture capital fund and focus on investing in some growth-stage startups.

In December 2018, Bain Capital LLC, a world-renowned private equity investment firm headquartered in Boston, USA, completed its latest Asian fund fundraising and successfully obtained US$4.65 billion in funds.

About China

On June 22, 2009, Bain Capital brought RMB 1.6 billion to "save" the bankrupt Gome Electrical Appliances Group. Subsequently, Bain Capital converted all of Gome Electrical Appliances' convertible bonds worth HKD 1.804 billion into shares, totaling 1.666 billion shares, accounting for 9.98% of the total share capital, becoming the second largest shareholder after Huang Guangyu at the time.

On September 28, 2010, Bain Capital benefited from the "civil war" of Gome Electrical Appliances and became the "only winner".

On January 22, 2015, Bain Capital cleared out all its shares in Gome and cashed out.