Free Republic

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the years, critics say, companies have successfully sidestepped bans on owning medical practices by buying or establishing local staffing groups that are nominally owned by doctors and restricting the physicians’ authority so they have no direct control. These laws and regulations, which started appearing nearly a...

For as long as anyone can remember, rent increases rarely happened at Ridgeview Homes, a family-owned mobile home park in upstate New York. That changed in 2018 when corporate owners took over the 65-year-old park located amid farmland and down the road from a fast food joint and grocery store about 30 miles northeast of Buffalo. Residents, about half of whom are seniors or disabled people on fixed incomes, put up with the first two increases. They hoped the latest owner, Cook Properties, would address the bourbon-colored drinking water, sewage bubbling into their bathtubs and the pothole-filled roads. When that...

Joe Biden pledged in October 2019 that his family members wouldn't engage in foreign business Hunter Biden still owns a 10% stake in a Chinese private equity firm, less than one month before his father, President-elect Joe Biden, is set to take office, business records reviewed by Fox News show. Joe Biden pledged in October 2019 that his family members wouldn't engage in foreign business dealings if he was elected president. "No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they are a cabinet member, will, in fact, have...

<p>With Main Street still largely in disarray, despite the billions of dollars left in Fed-backed lending programs for small and medium-sized businesses and Ice Cube asking "where's our f**king bailout?", we imagine the millions of newly impoverished Americans can appreciate the fact that America's jet-setting private equity barons are still doing their thing. After all, a pandemic is trivial compared with Steve Schwarzman's insatiable lust for more - more assets, more capital, more recognition.</p>

..Over seven years, Payless went through a wringer of private equity and hedge fund stewardship that left it with inadequate technology, run-down stores and no financial cushion to survive an era of upheaval in retail. .. Financial managers exert greater control over nearly all American companies than they once did. Their willingness to cause some pain — to close factories, lay people off, renegotiate arrangements with longtime suppliers — is, many economists argue, a feature, not a bug .. The American economy has become markedly less dynamic. Fewer businesses are being started, and the newcomers are having less success unseating...

In her continuing effort to punish success, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is going after an important piece of America’s thriving economy: the private-equity industry. Her subtly titled Stop Wall Street Looting Act would put private-equity investors in a legal category separate from other investors, severely limiting the legal protections available to them and diminishing their incentive to take risks and invest. Ms. Warren’s legislation would hold private-equity firms, but not other investors, responsible for the liabilities of the companies in which they invest, “including debt, legal judgments and pension-related obligations.” No other shareholders in the U.S. have to take on such...

Any tax increase that specifically targets private equity, venture capital, real estate and other long-term business investments is counterproductive to reaching that goal Margaret Thatcher reminded us that one of the problems with socialism is you “eventually run out of other people’s money,” but that doesn’t stop liberals like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) from finding more sources. His latest crusade is an effort to increase taxes on investment income – namely carried interest capital gains. For several years Schumer opposed increasing capital gains on carried interest, but now, after declaring he will work with President Trump when he...

The rich are increasingly enamored with private equity investing, but their rising allocation to PE funds doesn't mean they're cutting back on stock or cash allocations, according to a new survey of ultrawealthy investors by Tiger 21, a peer-to-peer network of high net worth individuals. The 265 members polled—with investable assets of more $25 billion—increased their private equity allocations to 22 percent of the average portfolio during the second quarter of 2014, according to Tiger 21. That matches the record in PE during the first quarter of 2013 and the most significant allocation increase since Tiger 21 began tracking member...

The Internal Revenue Service audits fewer than 1 percent of large business partnerships, according to a government report released Tuesday. That means some of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds and private equity firms are largely escaping close scrutiny by the IRS, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The Government Accountability Office says the number of large businesses organized as partnerships has more than tripled since 2002, yet hardly any get audited. In 2012, only 0.8 percent were subjected to field exams in which agents do a thorough review of books and records. …

Mitt Romney is indisputably a very rich man. And if he is elected president on Nov. 6, he will become one of the wealthiest people ever to hold the office. But exactly how wealthy is Romney? The figure that gets tossed around is $250 million in net worth — meaning the total value of his assets, financial and others, minus any debts. It’s a big number, but frankly, it seems low. Given the industry in which he made his fortune (private equity), the era when he made it (the 1980s and 1990s) and the wealth of his peers in that...

Very few of my friends understand private equity, let alone care about it. But some of them wrote me this past weekend, after reading Matt Taibbi's new cover story for Rolling Stone about Mitt Romney's time with Bain Capital. [....] Taibbi took out the long knives for this one, which means he sacrificed a bit of accuracy for potency. His overall thesis is correct: There is a fundamental hypocrisy in a former leveraged buyout investor railing against America's ballooning debt. Leveraged buyouts, by definition, add debt to a company's balance sheet -- weighing it down in the short-term so that...

Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will intensify scrutiny of an industry already bruised by the campaign season, as President Obama and the Democrats have sought to depict Mr. Romney through his long career in private equity as a businessman who dismantled companies and laid off workers while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $250 million. Some executives at the firms said they feared that Mr. Schneiderman, a first-term Democrat with ties to the Obama administration, was seeking to embarrass the industry because of Mr. Romney’s roots at Bain. Others suggested that the subpoenas, which were issued by the attorney general’s Taxpayer Protection...

Industrial Policy: At the NATO Summit, President Obama said his opponent's private equity success vs. the administration's failed industrial policy was what this election was all about. Speaking at the bankrupt Solyndra headquarters, his GOP opponent agreed. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. The photo of Mitt Romney holding a surprise press conference in front of the headquarters of the bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra poster may just be worth a good portion of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in November. "Two years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this...

Former President Bill Clinton suggested in a television interview Thursday that he believes President Obama's re-election campaign should stop trashing Mitt Romney's work in the private equity industry. In an interview with CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," Clinton, a top Obama surrogate who is set to raise cash with the president next week, directly contradicted Democrats who have attacked Romney's business record, suggesting it does qualify him for president. "I think he had a good business career," Clinton told guest host Harvey Weinstein, a movie mogul who is one of Obama's top fundraisers. "There's no question that in terms of getting...

I just heard Debby Wasserman Schultz on Rush claim that Romney made hundreds of millions of dollars by deliberately bankrupting companies. Romney should offer to give Obama a $1 million campaign donation if Obama can do two things. First, create a hypothetical example of how this can be done and second, show a single example of how this was done by Bain Capital. A private equity company cannot get debt funding, much less equityfunding, to execute a takeover without a business plan showing a plausable turn around concept and profitable exit strategy. Once money goes into a troubled company, it...

Though the Obama campaign has repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his career at Bain Capital, President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from three Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back. “No one aside from Mitt Romney is running for President highlighting their tenure as a corporate buyout specialist as one of job creation, when in fact, his goal was profit maximization,” said Mr. LaBolt. ”The President has support from business leaders across industries who have seen him pull the economy back from the brink...

<p>One of President Barack Obama’s top campaign spokesmen is a private equity manager whose firm has shut down several factories and laid off hundreds of people amid a stalled economy.</p> <p>Federico Pena’s role at Vestar Capital Partners has emerged as Obama’s aides and deputies continue their effort to portray former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s investment career as ruthless, job-destroying, profit-maximizing “vulture capitalism.” Pena has been a partner at Vestar since 2000.</p>

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This attack on Bain... I told you this was gonna happen. I told you this is why Obama wanted Romney. Way back during the Republican primaries I said Republicans are gonna nominate Romney. That's what Obama wants because of health care, and because of Wall Street. That's what Occupy Wall Street's about, going after Romney. And Obama has now come out and admitted it, that this campaign is gonna be about Bain Capital. It's backfiring everywhere you look, from Cory Booker to now Fast Eddie Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania All these Democrats are piping in, "Wait a...

Ironically, despite making Mitt Romney’s former company Bain Capital and other private equity firms the target of its latest attack, the Obama campaign held a near-$36,000 per plate fundraising dinner at the home of Tony James, president of the nation’s largest private equity firm, Blackstone Group. Citing the president’s latest Romney-hit-piece, Glenn Beck blasted the hypocrisy shown by the president when it comes to private equity firms. Obama’s condemnation of private equity hinges on the familiar narrative that the industry is renown for commandeering companies and slashing jobs, leaving untold numbers jobless — which is why it is doubly ironic...

Bain Capital has been used as a political weapon against Mitt Romney since 1994, but now his opponents might be rethinking ads about attacking him for his time at the private-equity firm as the ads are being criticized by some Democrats as well as Republicans. President Obama planned to set the political tone for the week with a new ad about an Indiana company that was bought by Bain and then shuttered, as the firm made millions of dollars and workers lost jobs. The biggest problem with the online video: Even Democrats say it attacks the business of private equity...