Banking on business

Romney spent the first years of his professional life in private business. His career took off when he joined Bain & Co., a consulting company.

Eventually, he and others at Bain decided they could use their expertise as consultants to invest in companies and fix them up rather than simply selling advice and letting the companies alone reap the benefits of improved performance. So they started Bain Capital.

"There's not been a better company in the industry than Bain Capital," said Howard Anderson, a lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Anderson said Romney was among the first to realize that Bain's expertise could be used for investing. "He knew how to take the brainpower that was Bain and turn it into money," said Anderson, who sat on the board of one company with Romney. Other companies have since adopted the Bain model, said Steve Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago School of Business. He added that if being able to charge higher fees is an indication of success, then Bain has been very successful. Romney's biggest success may be Staples, the office supply store. Romney is credited with urging Bain to put about $600,000 into the company, which opened one store in Brighton, Mass., in 1986. The company went public in 1989. Today, it has 1,962 stores and in 2006 had $18.2-billion in sales.

It can be difficult to quantify Romney's role in the successful Bain consulting and capital businesses, but those who follow such matters closely say he was instrumental.