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.
Mostly, what I got was stuff about the Massachusetts Gubernatorial race and the Salt Lake City Olympics.
However, 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 2001.
If Mitt Romney was no longer involved in any direct way with Bain Capital or its subsidiaries, he forgot to tell the business press.
More below the squiggle.
Unfortunately, neither article are publicly available on the internet, but if you have access to a library's newspaper database, you should be able to find them. I'd provide direct links if I had them available. I apologize for that.
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)
Clearly, Copulsky of
Investment Dealers' Digest believed Romney to be the "Chief Executive" of Bain Capital as late as July, 1999, more than four months after Romney claims he left, and apparently, no one at Bain corrected her.
But wait!
There's more!
The second article appeared as part of "Ad Notes..." in the Wall Street Journal on March 8, 2001, 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 2001, 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 2001.
2:16 PM PT: Woah! Recommended list! I'm honored!
5:39 PM PT: I have more, and it's a bombshell. I'll post a diary tomorrow.