Pagliuca said the firm remains focused on “making great investments and helping to build and grow great companies.”
If Bain Capital is used to the attacks, after four prior bouts with politics (three for Romney, one for Pagliuca) peers in the business have been chagrined by the sharp criticism coming from Newt Gingrich. A group that backs the former House Speaker is releasing a 28-minute film skewering Romney for destroying jobs.
“These are the guys who are supposed to be on my team, but they’re desperate,” said Kevin Landry, chairman of the Boston private equity firm TA Associates and a Romney supporter. He said Gingrich is misinforming voters.
“I just don’t think Americans have a good appreciation that the only creation of jobs is in the private sector. What’s bad capitalism? When you cut some jobs to save some others? You have to do that sometimes,’’ Landry said.
Meanwhile, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, the industry’s lobbying group in Washington, is launching a counter-attack to portray private equity firms as job creators. The attacks by Republicans on their business rankles, not only because the party generally embraces business, but because some of the group’s key members, including buyout giants Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., have been donors to Gingrich over the years.
In this election cycle, Gingrich’s 12th-largest source of funds is the Blackstone Group, the New York investment firm, with employees there donating $7,000 to his presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Back in 1996, when Gingrich was Speaker of the House, he received $5,000 from private equity executives -- notably Henry Kravis of KKR and John Childs, then of Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston, according to analysis by MapLight, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics.
