If Romney Wasn't at Bain from 1999 to 2002, He Forgot to Tell the Business Press [View all]

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If Romney Wasn't at Bain from 1999 to 2002, He Forgot to Tell the Business Press

by Lasgalen Lothir

I did a little digging this morning in the EBSCO Newspaper Source Plus database, the EBSCO Business Source Premier database, and the ProQuest National Newspapers Core database, searching for "Bain Capital" and "Romney", with the search limited to articles published between February 1, 1999 and December 31, 2002, just to see what would come up...I also stumbled across two curious stories, one in the Investment Dealers' Digest in July 1999, the other in the Wall Street Journal in March 2002.

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The first article, "Two Key Executives at Bain Resign to Start a New Shop", was written by Erica Copulsky and publisned in Investment Dealers' Digest on July 19, 1999 (Volume 65, Issue 29, pg. 11-13), is about the resignation of two executives, Geoffrey Rehnert and Marc Wolpow, from Bain Capital, LLC. That's not terribly interesting. However, the author tried to contact Bain to get a comment from them, writing:

Rehnert and Wolpow did not return calls by press time, nor did Bain Capital Chief Executive W. Mitt Romney. (emphasis mine)

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The second article appeared as part of "Ad Notes..." in the Wall Street Journal on March 8, 2002, on page B12. It discusses the acquisition of Grey Global, formerly known as Grey Advertising, by Brookside Capital Partners Fund, identified by the Wall Street Journal as "an arm of the investment house Bain Capital". As in the previous article, the authors tried to contact Brookside to get a comment:

W. Mitt Romney, president and chief executive of Brookside, didn't return calls seeking comment. (emphasis mine)

As with the earlier article, here, the Wall Street Journal identifies Mitt Romney as "president and chief executive of Brookside" "an arm of . . . Bain Capital", this time well into 2002, and no one at Brookside/Bain corrected them.

These aren't the kind of smoking guns the SEC filing papers are, but they do suggest that, at least as far as the business press was concerned, W. Mitt Romney was "Chief Executive" of Bain (or its subsidiary Brookside) between 1999 and 2002.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/14/1109965/-If-Romney-Wasn-t-at-Bain-from-1999-to-2002-He-Forgot-to-Tell-the-Business-Press

Quirk: Bain was still sending out press releases identifying Mitt as "Bain Capital CEO": http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002945280

Jennifer Granholm uncovered evidence linking Mitt to Bain in 2003
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002940521