I’m not privy to the ins and outs of Bain’s capital manipulations but I am a party as a stockholder to one situation a number of years ago. The company I had stock in had been sitting on a big cash reserve , paying regular dividends, waiting to finance projects when economic situations warranted. Seeing the situation some ‘capital’ investors invested their funds in taking over the majority of the board. In no time at all the original company was split and the reserve funds were taken away and I was left with two much lower level of investments. Granted the original company faltered somewhat but the large reserve was gone. I suspect Bain has been involved in similar shenanigans. At the time it was not called capitalization but called corporate raiding and looting.
Through the 1980s, 1990s and into this century it has been true that companies who behaved responsibly and kept cash to a maximum were taken over by those who dashed to the loan window. These purchases were then financed on the backs of employees, creditors and taxpayers. I believe that when the money center banks and investment brokers were allowed to merge this process accelerated. This devalued the skills of industrial organization and engineering and brought us to the reign of the arbitrageurs and attorneys. This is a societal shift which I believe was probably the result of legislation and regulation designed for the repair of some perceived problem and shows the law of Unintended Consequence.