Audax Group's Rehnert: What I've Learned

Career talk: Up close and personal

In a wide-ranging video interview with RSM’s Don Lipari, middle-market private equity veteran Geoff Rehnert gives an overview of his career, the changing nature of both the private equity landscape and U.S. corporate competition, what he’s learned from overseeing 500 add-on acquisitions, and that time Mitt Romney looked ready to wring his neck.

The deal that made Rehnert sick

Just two years after the founding of Audax Group, the Boston-based private equity firm made an investment in a motorcycle company that nearly crashed the recently launched firm. Rehnert shares the financial and psychological toll that the Indian Motorcycle deal took on him and his partners.

Audax invested $45 mllion into Indian Motorcycle in 2001, and by 2003 the company had collapsed, creating a big hole in Audax’s debut private equity fund.

In this interview clip, Rehnert, a former Bain Capital partner, describes the hard lessons Audax learned from that deal as well as how it made him sick, literally.