Assertion Not checkable as stated
Connaughton: 80% of Bain Capital staff have consulting and operating backgrounds
“I mean, I think that 80% of our people come from consulting and operating backgrounds. It's like the inverse of the rest of the industry, where 80% come from finance and investment backgrounds.”
Disclosure
Connaughton: 80% of Bain Capital investment decks focus on strategy over financial models
“And even if you look at our investment decks, 80% of it is about market, company strategy, and implementation of our thesis. And it's not like, A lot of financial models.”
Insight
Connaughton: Buyer of choice status still requires paying the highest price
“Seller always gets the highest price available out there. There's this famous thing that Partners will always bring into the investment committee. It's like we're the buyer of choice. And by the way, I believe we are, but that plus a nickel more will get you t…”
Insight
Connaughton: Hitting 3x to 10x on one-third of investments drives outperformance
“If we could have 15 shots on goal to make three to, in some cases, 10 times our money, we won't do it every time. But if we do it a third of the time, then we're going to earn that thousand basis points premium.”
Assertion Supported
Connaughton: Bain Capital started with VC and growth equity, not institutions
“We didn't have LPs that were institutional. We didn't know anybody on Wall Street. We actually started out in venture capital and growth equity because you could just write checks, didn't rely on other people's checks. And the money we raised was from the part…”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain shifted to larger deals to maximize talent ROI
“I think that evolution resulted in us all going to larger deals and deploying capital, and then our resources deployed against larger companies, because we put half our people more often in the companies on a day-to-day basis, and so having the ability to actu…”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain staffs two deal partners and one portfolio partner per transaction
“And on top of that, we always had two deal partners. And more recently, we also have a portfolio partner on every Transaction.”
Assertion Supported
Connaughton: Bain kept the same Asia-Pacific country managers for 20+ years
“We've had the same country managers in Japan, in China, in India, Korea, and Australia from the very beginning, and we've been there for 20 plus years”
Disclosure
Connaughton: All Bain Capital partners and employees co-invest in firm deals
“We've always been the head of the pack in terms of how much money we put in our own deals, and every one of the partners does that, and every one of the employees does that, is they're investing their deals.”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital measures upward feedback on every deal
“I think the second one is that you cannot be successful at the firm unless you have terrific upward feedback and are able to manage a team, and we measure that every deal.”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital targets 15-20 investments per fund seeking 3x-5x returns
“We're trying to find asymmetric upside, 15 to 20 shots on goal where we can not just generate a good return. And it may not be 25 times like it was in the beginning, it may not be 10 times like it was 20 years ago, but it can be three To five, and sometimes 10…”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital bought almost all cyclical businesses in 2006–2007
“So we bought almost all cyclical businesses in O six and O seven.”
Assertion Partly supported
Connaughton: Bain Capital manages $200B in assets across 13 strategies
“Over time we're a 180. We have two hundred billion of assets. We have 13 strategies.”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital PE funds total $23B-$24B including internal capital
“Now, mind you, today, between all of our global, at least private equity funds, we're about 23, twenty-four billion, including our own capital, so, and today, we're about probably the 10th largest fund, so it was different in scale, but the concept was the sam…”
Insight
Connaughton: Doubling profits in overlooked companies is private equity's core value driver
“If you can find a company that you can double profits in, particularly if it's not perceived as one by others that, that is capable of that, that's gold. That's the gold of our industry is having a unique insight and then putting muscle behind making it happen…”
Assertion Supported
Connaughton: Bain bought Baxter carve-out at 3x versus modern 15-20x multiples
“And so we negotiated a carve out three times even though at that time. Which obviously today in the diagnostic world, things trade at 15 to 20 times, so that's a, in of itself, a big opportunity for us.”
Assertion Supported
Connaughton: Bain Turned $7M Baker Hughes Carve-Out into $40M–$50M Profit
“The sellers in this case had two hundred million dollars of preferred on a business that was losing fifty million dollars, and they asked us to put up some money at least to show that we had some risk capital, so we put up seven million dollars. For a business…”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital requires junior staff to state bull and bear views
“When we're talking in an investment committee about what do we think about this company or this investment thesis, we're asking the most junior people who are closest to the work to articulate their view. We literally go around the room And have every person o…”
Disclosure
Connaughton: Bain Capital avoids infrastructure and energy, entered real estate via Harvard
“We're not in infrastructure. We're not in energy investing. There's a lot that we're not in, and frankly, we weren't even in real estate, even though we tried for all 30 of my years up until a couple years ago when we actually took over Harvard's real estate b…”
Assertion Supported
Connaughton: Bain & Company founded on single-client-per-industry model
“To take you back, you have to go back to 1973 because Bain and company was started on a very different premise as a consulting firm versus McKinsey and BCG and Booz Allen. Effectively, those firms were talking about big ideas. They sold to multiple clients in …”
