Private Equity Prowess: Bain's Brenda Rainey is the New Senior Director of the Firm's PE Practice

Bain & Company's Brenda Rainey was recently promoted to Senior Director of the firm's global Private Equity practice where she advises private equity firms and institutional investors and manages a global team to execute on strategic planning, budgeting, financial tracking and reporting and knowledge management. Rainey says Bain's Private Equity practice has grown eightfold over the past 15 years and represents about a quarter of the firm's global business. Bain maintains a global network of about 1,300 PE professionals serving clients. In addition, Rainey has led the development of Bain's annual Global Private Equity Report, the most widely read and cited report covering the private equity industry. Consulting caught up Rainey to discuss the practice, her new role and the overall market.

Consulting: Can you tell me a little bit about Bain's Private Equity practice?

Rainey: Bain is the leading consulting firm serving private equity firms and institutional investors active in the space.  Bain provides the full range of services across the investment value chain and that starts with deal generation and screening through to due diligence all the way through to exit planning. The other part of what we do is we help PE firms and institutional investors develop their own strategy for successful investing. We tend to think about PE firms as deal makers, and they are very focused on the businesses they are investing in, but you could step back and think about the private equity firm as a business itself that needs its own strategy for success. We will do a whole range of topics with PE firms—everything from helping them define their investments, developing sector strategy, adjacency expansion, fundraising strategies, organizational design and decision-making. There's really a whole host of challenges that private equity firms are facing themselves.