Bain Capital was founded in Boston in 1984 by three partners, including Mitt Romney, who were all also partners in Bain & Co. consulting. Romney was also Massachusetts governor at the time.
Thomas H. Lee Partners (THL) was also founded in Boston, in 1974.. and that's about all the information we can easily find on them. The Wikipedia page is suspiciously, er, identical to the company's website. Hoovers offers this more insightful explanation:
"Thomas H. Lee Partners is the teddy bear at the gate. Known as a "friendly" leveraged buyout (LBO) firm, the company uses a mix of debt, funds from institutional investors, and its own money to buy companies. Unlike the fearsome LBO outfits of the 1980s, Thomas H. Lee Partners eschews the axe for the handshake; it builds up a stake and courts management cooperation. Lee then usually sells the revamped acquisitions or takes them public. The company has teamed up with Bain Capital to buy media titan Clear Channel for almost $20 billion. Thomas H. Lee, who founded Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1974, left his namesake firm in 2006 to start a long-planned rival hedge fund and private equity venture."If I had the time -- more importantly, if I had the convenience of being paid for the time -- I could find out more about who they are, what they own, who owns them, and so on. Meaning that pretty much only professionals in the field, and a small portion of government regulators, know who these people really are. The rest of us are at a loss.
Let's put all this in perspective: Clear Channel owns over 1100 of some 14,000 radio stations across the country (nearly 8%), including up to seven stations in some larger markets such as San Francisco, and a dozen XM Satellite Radio channels. They also run substantial operations in outdoor advertising, live events, news and information, and various transnational media holdings. In the U.S., they further own and operate some 1500 broadcast towers.
All this will now be owned and controlled by a collection of financiers with obscure business extents and uncertain intentions.
At a public hearing in Seattle in March 2003, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps defended the unusual degree of regulation of media over commodity sectors, noting that, "Unique among all industries, the media manufactures democracy." What happens in the media sector inevitably affects how we obtain information, what information we receive, and how we understand it, all of which is key to how we participate in the democratic process. The media ultimately effects how our nation is run at every level, and by that effects how we live, and how we will live in the future, as well as our impact on others around the world. Ownership and control of media is therefore a matter of extreme importance to everyone in our society, and everyone else in the world affected by anything we do.
If I've convinced you that this is serious, you might by now ask, "well, why haven't I heard more about it if it's so important?" And I might respond, "well, who did you think was going to tell you about it?"