Equity Firms Like Bain Are Depicted as Colluding

[deminks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/business/documents-depict-equity-firms-like-bain-as-colluding.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON — In court documents that lawyers for Bain Capital sought to keep secret, the company and other leading private equity firms are depicted as unofficial partners in a bid-rigging conspiracy aimed at holding down the prices of businesses they were seeking to buy.

In Bain’s biggest acquisition, the $32.1 billion purchase of the hospital giant HCA in 2006, competitors agreed privately to “stand down” and not bid on the company as part of an understanding with Bain to divvy up companies targeted for leveraged buyouts, according to internal e-mails.

The documents have become part of a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Boston brought against Bain and other firms by shareholders who say the firms’ bid-rigging artificially deflated the sales price of more than two dozen companies and cost them billions of dollars.

(snip)

Mr. Romney is not mentioned in the publicly released portion of the documents, and lawyers for Bain said in opposing The Times’s motion to unseal the entire filing that he “could not have been involved in the deals at issue here” because he had already left Bain by the time the first deal was finalized.

(end snip)

That is, of course, if Swiss Mitt ever really left Bain, which is questionable.

Still smirkin, Willard?

[fleur-de-lisa]

1. This doesn't surprise me in the least.

Mitch is a criminal . . . always has been, always will be.