After his graduation, Romney took a job at the Boston Consulting Group. Three years later, he jumped ship to join fast-growing rival Bain & Company, a five-year-old firm known for snapping up the sharpest, most well-rounded HBS grads. “Bain did not accept the person who was only smart,” says consultant David Maister. “To get into Bain, you had to be very smart and know how to get along with other people.”

At the time, management consulting was the hot field for business-school grads, the equivalent of investment banking in the ’80s and hedge funds in the ’90s. Bain had a distinctive philosophy. “The company would work with only one company in any given industry,” says Bob White, whom Romney recruited to work at the firm. “You’d not only work with the senior people to set strategy, you’d stay and work alongside the management teams to implement the solutions.” Bain consultants wouldn’t just scrutinize isolated problem areas; they would infiltrate a company from the shop floor to the boardroom. Such bottom-to-top access meant that Bain consultants could constantly diagnose new ailments, thus decreasing the amount of time spent trolling for new business while maximizing billable hours.

Working at Bain offered “all the attractions that consulting provides,” Maister says. “Incredibly high income immediately, access to CEO-level issues, a self-important status. You’re a young punk in your twenties and suddenly you’re giving advice to the heads of organizations. Your self-image is transformed. You now see yourself as quite capable of giving advice to the world.”

But after six years rising through the ranks, Romney left to help found Bain Capital, a venture-capital firm. “It was a logical outgrowth for them because of their emphasis on implementation,” says Charlie Green. “It was, ‘Let’s stop billing by the hour, let’s get a piece of the action.’”

If Romney’s political road has been marred with potholes, not so his business career: He was successful at Bain & Company and extraordinarily successful at Bain Capital. Perhaps his most lucrative decision was investing in the idea for an office-supply store called “Staples”; the chain now has some 1,800 stores, and Bain Capital’s initial investment of about $600,000 has been returned untold times over. “His reputation was superb,” says Bill Weld. “Everyone wanted to get into that fund.”

“He is extremely smart, extremely analytical, and he bathes himself in data,” explains one hedge-fund dealmaker who has worked with Romney. “Wealth is an important part of his story, but there’s an intellectual and analytical dimension to finance and equity that he absolutely thrives on. He likes to have 10 or 15 people around the table sharing their different views and just duking it out.”

Romney often talks about the success he has had turning businesses around; in 1990 he even rescued Bain & Company from collapse after a period of mismanagement. He’s less loquacious, though, about just how much money he’s made in the process. But the hedge fund source puts Romney’s fortune at between $500 million and one billion dollars, “and I don’t know which one it’s closer to.”

Another finance source who has worked closely with Romney thinks he does know; this chief executive puts Romney’s wealth at between $900 and $950 million. The amount could be significantly larger, but in keeping with Mormon custom, Romney tithes 10 percent of his pre-tax income, meaning that, over the years, Romney has given the Church of Latter-day Saints tens of millions of dollars.

Friends say that there was little outward sign of Romney’s wealth but ample evidence of his generosity. Joe O’Donnell, founder of the Boston Culinary Group and a graduate both of Harvard College and HBS, came to know Romney as a neighbor in the Boston suburb of Belmont. “I coached his kids in Little League,” O’Donnell says. When O’Donnell’s son Joey, who suffered from cystic fibrosis, died at age 12, Romney and a team of boy scouts—he’d been a scout himself—helped build “Joey’s Park,” a Belmont playground. “And this was when his father was the only person who knew who Mitt Romney was,” O’Donnell says. Every year Romney writes the Joey Fund, a foundation O’Donnell started to fund cystic fibrosis research and care, “a substantial check.” And every year Romney, along with boy scouts and fellow Mormons, would spend a weekend cleaning the park.

There is a humor, even a goofiness, to Romney that the public doesn’t see, O’Donnell says. They once went to the movies and a technical glitch delayed the start of the film. So, O’Donnell recalls, “I bet him $100—not ‘bet’, Mitt doesn’t bet—I said I’d give him $100 if he stood up in the crowded theater and made a 30-second speech. He didn’t even wait for me to finish. He got up and announced, ‘Excuse me, but I’ve got this dope with me who’s willing to give me $100 to do this…’” About 28 seconds later, the crowd gave Romney a round of applause, and O’Donnell gave him the hundred bucks.

When Romney, a registered independent until 1993, decided to run against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney’s friends were skeptical. “I said, ‘Mitt, this is like running against God in his hometown,’” says Christodoulo. “But at that point he had a bunch of money”, that longstanding antipathy to the Kennedys, and a passion to continue his father’s public work. “He felt somebody needed to take on Ted Kennedy,” says Bob White.

Romney campaigned as a fiscal conservative and social liberal. He declined, for example, to endorse Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. “I’m not a partisan politician,” he explained. “My hope is that, after this election, it will be the moderates of both parties who control the Senate, not the Jesse Helmses.” He insisted that he was pro-choice and supported Roe v. Wade—“You will not see me wavering on that”—and he argued that he’d be more progressive on gay issues than Ted Kennedy. In a letter to the Massachusetts Log Cabin Republicans, Romney wrote, “I am not unaware of my opponent’s considerable record in the area of civil rights…For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better…We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”

For a while, it was close—Kennedy’s closest race. Into late September, Romney was within a few percentage points of the senator. For Romney, it was personal. Joe O’Donnell remembers watching the first debate of the campaign at Romney’s house. Though in declining health, George W. Romney was present to cheer on his son. “He was sick, but he was there,” O’Donnell says. “He was instrumental for Mitt.” (In July 1995, the 88-year-old George Romney would collapse and die while exercising on a treadmill.) Romney performed credibly in that debate, but as the election neared, Kennedy poured money into the race and Massachusetts voters decided that they weren’t really ready to dispense with the Democratic warhorse. Kennedy won, 58-41.

In the aftermath, a demoralized Romney doubted that he would run for office again. The campaign “was hard-fought and not particularly pleasant,” Bob White says. Publicly, Kennedy had slammed Romney because of layoffs at a factory in which Bain Capital had invested—even though Romney was on leave campaigning at the time of the firings. The Kennedy camp also suggested that Mormonism was weird and out of the mainstream; Congressman Joe Kennedy, Ted’s nephew, called Mormonism racist. Once again, Mitt Romney, the handsome, wealthy, happily married Harvard grad, was reminded that when it came to the Kennedys, Harvard, and Massachusetts, he would always be an outsider.

Not long after the election, Romney got drawn into an ugly fight over a proposed Mormon temple to be built in Belmont. The plans called for a 94,000-square-foot building with a 156-foot-high spire, and some incensed neighbors, including Alan Altshuler, a Harvard professor of urban planning, led a years-long fight to block construction. The dispute put Romney, a lay official in the church, in an awkward situation. George Christodoulo, also a Belmont resident, was asked to represent some neighbors in the dispute against the church. “I called Mitt and said, ‘Mitt, it’s not my first choice to be involved in the controversial things in the town I live in.’ And he said, ‘You’d be great—at least I could talk to you.’” After years of litigation and hard words, including accusations of anti-Mormon bias, a slightly smaller version of the temple was completed in 2001.

So in 1998, when Romney was asked to come to Salt Lake City to save a faltering Winter Olympics, he hesitated, unsure about another public role. And he had another concern: After losing sensation on the right side of her body, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “I was not an example of strength and courage when I was going through it,” she has said. “I was pretty scared.” She had reason to be. “Ann was very, very sick,” remembers Joe O’Donnell, so weak that “she couldn’t get out of bed for a while.” By changing her diet and through exercise such as yoga, Pilates, and horseback riding, Ann gradually improved, but for years she felt weak and vulnerable to relapse. One reason Romney decided to accept the Olympics job was because the Utah climate was reportedly good for Ann’s health.

When Romney took the position as CEO of the Olympic organizing committee, the Games faced multiple crises: allegations that Olympic officials had accepted bribes to locate the games in Salt Lake City, massive disorganization, low morale, and high spending—the budget was bloated with items such as $10,000 to provide motivational speakers for Olympic volunteers. Romney slashed costs and got the Games back on track. And because the Olympian culture did not always blend comfortably with Mormon conservatism, he negotiated compromises on issues such as whether the snowboarders could play hip-hop music (not if it was profanity-laced), or whether alcohol could be served at the medal ceremonies (yes, but off to one side). At the end, the Games would turn a profit approaching $100 million.

Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next >>