it's happened at a number of instances. >> woodruff: dan primak, how is success measured, then, at apany like bain? is it purely the profits that are earned for the investors? >> it is, look, you obviously don't want to have... not just from a p.r. perspective but these are people, nobody likes to fire people or lay people off or shut down factories. and ultimately it is profits but they kind of should go hand in hand. bain, indeed, through some financial engineering was able to make money on companies it bought that ultimately failed. it's a tricky process but you actually can do it. in general, the way private equity firms make money and the way you make the returns beth was talking about is by growing businesses and that should mean adding revenue, adding employees et cetera. in the end, it's profits, that's what firms are supposed to do and to be hon fest that's not what they were focused on primarily their investors would leave and also could theoretically sue them for it. >> woodruff: beth healy, you've been looking at bain for quite some time. i was looking at a story you work

dan primak, first of all, for those of us who don't work in the financial services industry, what doesn do? >> bain for the most part, they have a lot of different businesses, but their primary business is private equity. which basically means you buy a company, you try to improve it and then you try to sell it later at a higher price either another private equity firm, another corporation or, in some cases, take it public. that's the gist of the business. they have investors who give them the money to do it, then they take a cut of the profits if there are some. the. >> woodruff: and beth healy, what's the role of borrowing in all this? we know a lot of this has to do with so-called leveraged buyouts. so what's the role of debt in all this? >> that's right. so when the company buys... when companies like bain buy a firm they also borrow a lot of money from the bank. in fact, they borrow much more than they typically put down. you might put down $10 million and borrow many tens of millions more or even hundreds of millions more. >> woodruff: dan primak, so the stated goal of a private