Criticism of private equity "ridiculous", say practitioners

Many private equity practitioners are probably cursing the day Mitt Romney decided to run for the US presidency. In a contentious primary race, rival Republican candidates have demonised Romney for his career at Bain Capital, accusing him of being a vulture capitalist, a job destroyer and, among other things, the archetypal one-percenter. In truth, Romney is far richer than that — with a net worth of around $250 million, he is more like the 1% of the 1%. Yet his attempt to win the…