Yesterday, I wrote a small, barely-noticed diary entitled "If Romney Wasn't at Bain from 1999 to 2002, He Forgot to Tell Stericycle". In that diary, I pointed out how W. Mitt Romney's actual signature was on the November 9, 2001 SEC filing documenting Brookside Capital Partner's acquisition of stock in Stericycle, a medical waste company that is involved, among other things, in the disposal of aborted fetuses.
That led me to peruse the EDGAR database a little more, looking for other stock acquisitions between February 11, 1999, when W. Mitt Romney 2012 claims to have left Bain Capital (etc.), and December 31, 2002. This is where I found a few curious things.
The first curious thing was that W. Mitt Romney's signature is not on a lot of these "Schedule 13G" documents. There are a lot of other "Statement of acquisition of beneficial ownership by individuals" filings that Bain and its subsidiaries did in that timeframe without his signature, which makes the ones he did sign all the more curious. In fact, I couldn't find any other documents from Brookside Capital that Romney had signed, though it's conceivable that I missed something.
The second curious thing is below the squiggle.
Several of the Bain Capital filings do have his signature, and one of them is one of the "troublesome" ones: ChipPAC.
This was filed on February 14, 2001, just over two years past the date after W. Mitt Romney claims to have left Bain Capital.
If you scroll down in the document, you'll see:
s W. Mitt Romney
------------------------------------
W. Mitt Romney
As I noted in my diary yesterday, the "
s W. Mitt Romney" represents Romney's
actual signature. I can't stress this enough. These aren't documents he left for the other "Managing Directors" of Bain Capital to sign--he signed them himself. In fact, he signed this one twice.
ChipPAC is particularly troubling. The Washington Post, in an article entitled "Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas", wrote
Just as Romney was ending his tenure at Bain, it reached the culmination of negotiations with Hyundai Electronics Industry of South Korea for the $550 million purchase of its U.S. subsidiary, Chippac, which manufactured, tested and packaged computer chips in Asia. The deal was announced a month after Romney left Bain. Reports filed with the SEC in late 1999 showed that Chippac had plants in South Korea and China and was responsible for marketing and supplying the company’s Asian-made computer chips. An overwhelming majority of Chippac’s customers were U.S. firms, including Intel, IBM and Lucent Technologies.
A filing with the SEC revealed the promise that Chippac offered investors. “Historically, semiconductor companies primarily manufactured semiconductors in their own facilities,” the filing said. “Today, most major semiconductor manufacturers use independent packaging and test service providers for at least a portion of their . . . needs. We expect this outsourcing trend to continue." (emphasis mine)
Moreover, it's this deal--the ChipPAC deal--that Romney's demanding Obama apologize for pointing out.
Now, I'm not the first to break this. CBS News addressed it on "Face the Nation" yesterday, Talking Points Memo covered it on Saturday, and the Huffington Post caught it on Saturday.
Nonetheless, it's important to keep the focus on the simple and easy part of this:
W. Mitt Romney signed the ChipPAC deal, just like he signed the Stericycle deal.
11:05 AM PT: A guy could get used to finding himself on the Rec List this often. Thank you.