Bain & Company history

In 1979, Bain opened a London office to serve European customers as the firm grew at a rapid pace, with revenues increasing at a rate of 40 to 50 percent a year.

The relationship began in 1981, at a time when Guinness shares were trading at penny stock levels after a decade of diversification efforts that took the company far from its core business.

To help aid its case that Bain added true value, the firm in 1983 created the "Bain Index" to measure the improved performance of clients' stocks against the Dow Jones industrial average.

In response, Bain & Co. was formally incorporated in 1985 and, over the course of two years, an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) was established.

In December 1986, however, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry began to investigate the $3.8 billion stock acquisition of Distillers, masterminded by a "war cabinet" that included a Bain associate named Olivier Roux, who had been "lent" to Saunders and became one of his top aides.

While dining that first night in Madrid, according to a 1987 Fortune profile, he was tracked down "with an urgent call from his secretary.

In the fall of 1990, Bill Bain attempted to sell the company but found no buyer.

In 1993, the head position was split into two roles – an executive head (Worldwide Managing Director) and a non-executive head (Chairman of the Board). Orit Gadiesh, named Bain’s first Chairman in 1993, was fundamental in maintaining Bain’s culture.

Bain's exits logged a staggering 173% annual internal rate of return through the end of 1999, when Romney stopped his day-to-day work to head the struggling Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Finally, in the summer of 2000, Bain opened an office in New York City in an effort to accommodate talented people who wanted to work for the firm but preferred to live in New York.

Bain's Fund VII, a quaint $2.5 billion, which started in 2001 just before Romney's formal exit, was Bain's only true success of the decade, returning $4.4 billion to investors for a solid 29% internal rate of return so far, according to PitchBook, a private equity monitoring service.

The firm also likes restaurants, having quadrupled its money on the $1.5 billion buyout of Burger King in 2002.

Bain Capital partnered with KKR and Merrill Lynch to buy the hospital chain for $33 billion in November 2006.

In 2007, the firm expanded its global footprint to 37 offices, with office openings in Kiev, Moscow, Helsinki, andFrankfurt.

Bain and buyout firm Thomas H. Lee Partners bought the nation's largest group of radio stations for $24 billion in July 2008, including $2.1 billion in equity, just in time to watch the advertising market collapse along with the United States economy.

Bain took Sensata public in March 2010 and since then has sold stock for $1.4 billion, more than returning the $985 million in equity it put in.