| William Bain | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1937 |
| Occupation | Consultant, Management expert |
William Worthington "Bill" Bain, Jr. (born 1937) is a management consultant, known for his role as one of the founders of the management consultancy that bears his name, Bain & Company.[1][2] Prior to founding Bain & Company, Bill Bain was a Vice-President at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).[1]
William Bain was born in 1937 in Johnson City, Tennessee, to a food wholesaler.[1][2] He attended East Tennessee State College for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt University.[1] He graduated in 1959, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors, with a degree in history.[1][2][3] He then got married and became a father.[1] He did graduate work in history at Vanderbilt as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar in 1960.[1][2] He briefly worked at a steel fabricating company before returning to Vanderbilt in 1960 to work as the school's director of development.[1] In this capacity, he met Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group.[1] After meeting Henderson, Bain chose to join BCG.[1]
In the early 1970s, Bain was considered internally at Boston Consulting Group to be Henderson's eventual successor. However, in 1973 Bain resigned from BCG to start his own strategy consulting firm.[1] Bain quickly recruited Black & Decker and Texas Instruments, two BCG clients, as his own clients,[1] and hired six of BCG's employees. Bain's new company diverged from other consulting firms of the time by focusing on longer assignments.[1] He also sought to develop close relations with the companies, helping not only to devise strategy but also to implement it.[1] He also promised not to represent more than one client per industry,[1][4] and for many years would only accept assignments that reported to the client's CEO.
He formed Bain Capital, a private equity firm, in 1984,[2][3] and appointed Mitt Romney, one of the partners at Bain & Company, to be Bain Capital's first CEO.
He is chairman of the board of Bain, Willard Companies, L. P. which he co-founded in 1993 with Ralph R. Willard, President of Bain, Willard.[2][3] He is a director of Hinckley Yacht Company.[2][3]
Bain is a longtime trustee of several children’s charities in Boston, including Children’s Hospital Boston, The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and the Posse Foundation.[2][3] He also serves on the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University.[2][3]
He has four children, William III, Adam, Alexander, and Samantha, and resides in Naples, Florida with his wife, Ann.[3]