Bill Bain (consultant)

Bill Bain
Bill Bain in 1981
Born	William Worthington Bain, Jr. 1937 (age 79–80) Johnson City, Tennessee, U.S.
Residence	Naples, Florida, U.S.
Alma mater	Vanderbilt University (BA)
Occupation	Consultant, management expert
Known for	Bain & Company, Bain Capital

William Worthington "Bill" Bain, Jr. (born 1937) is an American management consultant, known for his role as one of the founders of the management consultancy that bears his name, Bain & Company. Prior to founding Bain & Company, he was a vice-president at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

William Bain was born in 1937 in Johnson City, Tennessee, to a food wholesaler. He attended East Tennessee State College for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He graduated in 1959, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors, with a degree in history. He then got married and became a father. He did graduate work in history at Vanderbilt as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar in 1960. He briefly worked at a steel fabricating company before returning to Vanderbilt in 1960 to work as the school's director of development. In this capacity, he met Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group. After meeting Henderson, Bain chose to join BCG.

In the early 1970s, Bain was considered internally at Boston Consulting Group to be Henderson's eventual successor. However, in 1973 Bain resigned from BCG to start his own strategy consulting firm. Bain quickly recruited Black & Decker and Texas Instruments, two BCG clients, as his own clients, and hired six of BCG's employees. Bain's new company diverged from other consulting firms of the time by focusing on longer assignments. He also sought to develop close relations with the companies, helping not only to devise strategy but also to implement it. He also promised not to represent more than one client per industry, and for many years would only accept assignments that reported to the client's CEO.

He formed Bain Capital, a private equity firm, in 1984, and appointed Mitt Romney, one of the partners at Bain & Company, to be Bain Capital's first CEO.