When Romney was running Bain Capital they had a policy of letting the employees buy into the deals they were doing. Imagine if you can, a company where every employee from the CEO to the mail room girl to the guy emptying the trash, could buy into the benefits of making a good business decision. Bain Capital was in the business of fixing broken companies. Every deal they did required them to go in and find a better way of doing business for whatever company they bought. Now imagine every employee having a piece of the action, which could make them big bucks, if and only if the company they were fixing proved to be a long term winner.
One of the first benefits I see is that everyone would be on the same page. Hidden agendas would be few. Wasted effort would be at a minimum. There wouldn’t be a staff of human resources flunkies running around trying to come up with team work seminars and “motivational speakers”. Everybody who had a piece of the deal they were working on would know that a good decision today would make the difference between a great payoff in the future or a personal loss in the market.
Too much is being made of this “L” shares business. Companies have preferred shares, always have. Normally they go to preferred people. At Bain everybody got the same ratio of preferred to common stock. If you worked the mail room and had $1,000 bucks to invest you got the same ratio as if you had perfect hair and were the boss. Obviously the boss had more cash to invest than you, but he got the same deal as you did. When everybody working together made everybody a pile of money, you got your share too, just like the bosses and the big money investors.
I don’t want Romney as my president. However, if anyone at Bain is reading this, I have an MBA and a back ground in finance, banking and management. Drop me a line anytime.
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