February 14, 2011 source: this article was a guest post at
I was heartened this month to see that the Private Equity Growth Capital Council launched a multi-million-dollar education and public affairs campaign on the Internet highlighting the basics of private equity. Hopefully, this will address a general lack of understanding about private equity, which, among other things, is too often confused with venture capital.
This misperception was in the spotlight last month, when Republican and Democratic attacks focused on Mitt Romney’s time as the head of private equity firm Bain Capital. The message was that Romney was a “vulture capitalist,” defined as an investor consumed with maximizing profit, often by terminating hundreds, sometimes thousands of jobs. Romney is not and was not a vulture capitalist, a mean-spirited, derogatory term sometimes used to describe venture capitalists (VCs). Romney was a private equity investor, one who specialized mostly in leveraged buyouts…
I was heartened this month to see that the Private Equity Growth Capital Council launched a multi-million-dollar education and public affairs campaign on the Internet highlighting the basics of private equity. Hopefully, this will address a general lack of understanding about private equity, which, among other things, is too often confused with venture capital.Read the full post and comments at Xconomy