In defense of private equity, and Romney
"Shareholder democracy.... just doesn't work anymore," says Andrew Greenberg
Newt Gingrich- and President Obama-backers are using Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney's record as boss of private-equity buyout firm Bain Capital against him. That's provoked a ringing defense of "P.E." by Andrew T. Greenberg, managing partner at investment banking firm Fairmount Partners and chief executive of GF Data Resources, a Conshohocken firm that tracks private-equity deals.
Private equity has prospered, maybe to the point where a private equity exectutive will be our next President, because "shareholder democracy" - the whole post-World War II network of publicly-traded, regulated companies, owned by mutual funds and other broad-based investors - "just doesn't work anymore," Greenberg writes: