The only one who doesn’t know what the goal of Bain Capital was when Mitt Romney ran it is, apparently, Mitt Romney. Tom Stemberg, the Staples guy himself, says Bain was not trying to create jobs but was instead trying to create wealth for its principals. Duh.
A top surrogate to Mitt Romney said making money — rather than creating jobs — was the primary goal of the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee when he was running Bain Capital LLC, saying he “acted responsibly” as chief executive officer of the private-equity firm.
“The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money,” said Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples Inc. (SPLS), in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital.” Bain also helped businesses grow, so “these things had redeeming social value, in addition to making Mitt and his investors a lot of money.”
Stemberg made the remarks to set the record straight in an ad perceived as negative toward Romney, which portrays Mitt as a corporate raider. While objecting to that spot, Stemberg gave $20,000 to the Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future to make negative ads about Obama.
