From The Washington Post Fact Checker:
"Did Mitt Romney get a ‘bailout’ for Bain & Company?""First of all, Bain & Company is not the same thing as Bain Capital, the private equity firm from which Romney made his fortune. Bain Capital is a spin-off from Bain & Company, which is a traditional consulting firm. But in the early 1990s, Bain & Company overextended itself after an ill-advised decision in 1985-1986 by the firm’s eight founding partners to take $200 million out of the firm, for themselves, with borrowed money. (Romney, who had left in 1984, was not a founder.)
. . . in reality, Romney rescued his former firm, including restructuring its bank loans, in a deal in which his former partners were given the toughest medicine. Bain & Company survives to this day, which certainly suggests Romney’s solution was a better outcome than letting the firm collapse.
We wavered between one and two Pinocchios here.
Calling a loan-restructuring a “bailout” is a real stretch, especially since there does not appear to be an unusual transaction."
