Introduction

History may well define January 2012, the month in which I began writing this book, as the nadir of the private equity industry. It opened with the issuance by Newt Gingrich’s political action committee, Winning Our Future, of a 28-minute, seven-second video titled ‘When Mitt Romney Came to Town’. Intended to associate the US Presidential candidate and co-founder of Bain Capital with the excesses of Wall Street by showcasing the plight of small-town Americans who had lost their livelihoods when Bain-backed companies downsized or became bankrupt, the film accused the firm, and by implication private equity as a whole, of over-leveraging investee businesses, asset-stripping and having no regard for the human consequences of its actions.