ANN CROTTY: The bane of corporate SA
Bain & Co and Bain Capital — each of them the bane of corporate SA
Chances are that Bain Capital is scrambling around, desperately trying to remind people it has nothing to do with Bain & Co. Despite apparently huge effort over the years, the two Bain companies have failed to convince SA that they are distinct entities and have been since 1984, when partners from Bain & Co founded Bain Capital and went their own way. The confusion is not just a local thing. It seems that, globally, each company is referred to by outsiders simply as Bain. In SA this caused all sorts of discomfort for Bain & Co during the long period when the Edcon private equity deal driven by Bain Capital went horribly wrong. Even at the time it was taken, the decision to pile huge debt onto Edcon seemed remarkably ill-considered and it could yet cause the collapse of a once-great SA group. Given the destruction involved, it might have seemed whimsical to constantly remind people that Bain & Co is a consultancy that has nothing to do with Bain Capital. But the brand value of even t...
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