American businessman
William Worthington Bain Jr. (July 30, 1937 – January 16, 2018)[1] was an American management consultant, known for his role as one of the founders of the management consultancy that bears his name, Bain & Company.[2][3] Prior to founding Bain & Company, he was a vice-president at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).[2]
Early life
William Bain was born on July 30, 1937,[5] in Johnson City, Tennessee, to William Worthington Bain Sr. and his wife, Ruby Kathleen Bain (born Cloyd).[6][2][3][7] His father was a small food wholesaler who had little formal education[8] and came from a farming family with eleven siblings. He graduated from Science Hill High School in 1955.[5]
Later, he attended East Tennessee State College, majoring in engineering, for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.[2] He graduated in 1959, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors, with a degree in history.[2][3][9] He then got married and became a father.[2] He did graduate work in history at Vanderbilt as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar in 1960.[2][3]
Career
Bain briefly worked at a steel fabricating company, where he'd held summer jobs, before returning to Vanderbilt in 1960 to work as the school's director of development at the age of 26.[2] In this capacity, he met Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group.[2] After meeting Henderson, Bain agreed to join BCG in 1967 at a starting salary of $17,000 per year.[2][8]
In the early 1970s, Bain was considered internally at Boston Consulting Group to be Henderson's eventual successor.[11] However, in 1973 Bain resigned from BCG to start his own strategy consulting firm.[2] Bain quickly recruited Black & Decker and Texas Instruments, two BCG clients, as his own clients,[2] and hired away seven of BCG's employees.[11] Bain's new company diverged from other consulting firms of the time by focusing on longer assignments.[2] He also sought to develop close relations with the companies, helping not only to devise strategy but also to implement it.[2] He also promised not to represent more than one client per industry,[2][12] 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,[3] and appointed Mitt Romney, one of the partners at Bain & Company, to be Bain Capital's first CEO.[9]
After leaving Bain, he was chairman of the board of Bain Willard Companies, L.P., which he co-founded in 1993 with Ralph R. Willard, President of Bain.[3][9] He was also a director of Hinckley Yachts.[3][9]
Charitable work
Bain was 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.[3][9] He also served on the board of trust of Vanderbilt University.[3][9] and was a trustee of the Naples Children and Education Foundation in Naples, Florida from 2002 until his death.[3]
Personal life
Bain was married three times and fathered four children.[7][9]
He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and died aged 80 at his home in Florida in early 2018.[5][7][8][6]
