The Democratic former governor of Massachusetts is joining Bain Capital — the Boston equity firm that Democrats savaged Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race for having led, the Boston Globe reported Monday night.
In an interview Monday with the Globe, Deval Patrick said he’d work on building what he called a socially-responsible (yet still profitable) portfolio of companies for Bain to invest in.
“This is a chance to have real meaning and mission in my work,” after politics, Mr. Patrick told the Globe in an interview Monday at Bain’s Hancock Tower offices.
The article written by Globe reporter Beth Healy said that the Patrick appointment “gives Bain its first foothold in the growing field of ’social impact’ investing, tackling social problems such as hunger or climate change with for-profit investments.”
Mr. Patrick had few immediate details on what sort of “social impact” companies he would help Bain find and fund, with the Globe reporting that details “are still to be worked out.”
“The new fund is not philanthropy, Bain executives said. There will be significant pressure on Patrick to find strong investments — companies that can both address major social needs and produce profits, though not necessarily on the scale Bain typically expects of its multi-billion-dollar private equity deals,” the Globe reported.
Mr. Patrick said he had no immediate plans to re-enter politics, but he told the Globe he acknowledged how working at Bain would look for a Democrat with political ambitions.
Indeed, the party has swung left on economics in the years since 2012, in part at the behest of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat and a former Harvard professor and consumer advocate.
“I’ve spent most of my career in the private sector. I know that there are deals that go really well and deals that don’t go so well,” Mr. Patrick told the Globe. “By the way, that happens in the public sector as well.”
In the 2012 campaign, Mr. Patrick did not personally join his party’s attacks on Bain, which was founded by Mr. Romney and which Democrats used to paint Mr. Romney — with considerable success, according to polling — as a moneybags plutocrat who downsized companies and closed factories in the name of shareholder profit.
Instead, Mr. Patrick in appearance on MSNBC at the time called Bain “a perfectly fine company.”
“They have a role in the private economy, and I’ve got a lot of friends there … on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “I think the Bain strategy has been distorted in some of the public discussions.”
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