Bain EDGAR filings

As this blog moved into its fourth year, I began to appreciate more clearly that one of its distinctions - an accidental merit that might be more deliberately cultivated, going forward - was that we would publish closer readings of primary texts than one might find in analyses published elsewhere.

Hearing the news of the puzzle over whether Mitt Romney ran, or had retired from, Bain Capital just after the turn of the century - was he or wasn't he trying to have it both ways, depending on the audience? - I thought I might dip into Bain's EDGAR filings and see if some disclosure there might signify more to my legal eyes than meets the journalist's.

But it turns out not to be the task of a free hour or two on a Sunday afternoon! There are scores of filings for dozens of Bain-related entities, and most of them appear to be attenuated from the primary drama of the (alleged) offshoring activities of the Bain portfolio company activities at the time of Romney's absence/continuous leadership.

Here's where you have to laud the tenacity of the professional reporter. It would take a person the better part of a day, perhaps a bit longer, to begin to relate the various Bain filings - mostly disclosures about ownership - to filings by the actual portfolio companies doing the offshoring, restructuring, right-sizing, etc. If you could get your hands on the Bain fund offering memoranda from the time - that would be golden, might well definitively settle the question.

So I leave us with a link to a post by Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler that has some good reasoning and great links, and the thought that, should national focus narrow to a particular chain of filings, we may have another go here.

Photo: World Affairs Council of Philadelphia / Flickr.