Edward Conard

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Edward Walter Conard
File:Edward Conard.jpg
Residence New York, New York
Alma mater <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
B.S.E. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
  • M.B.A. 1982 Harvard Business School
Employer <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
self - independent director
Spouse(s) Jill A. Davis (m. May 13, 2000)
Website www.edwardconard.com

Edward W. "Ed" Conard is an American businessman, author and scholar. He is the author of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, a New York Times top-ten bestseller book published in 2012. He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.[1] Previously, he was a founding partner of Bain Capital, where he worked closely with his friend and colleague, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.[2]

Early life and education

Conard graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S.E. in Operations Research in 1978.[1] He earned his M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1982.[1]

Career

Early career

Prior to business school, Conard worked as an automotive engineer at Ford Motor Company. After graduating, he joined Bain & Company, the Boston-based global management-consulting firm, eventually becoming a vice president and leading the firm’s industrial practice.[2]

Conard left Bain in 1990 to become a director at Wasserstein Perella & Co., a boutique investment bank. At Wassernstein, he headed the firm's Transaction Development Group.[2]

Bain Capital

Conard was a founding Partner of Bain Capital, the head of Bain's New York office and the leader of its industrial practice.[3] He joined the firm in 1993 prior to the firm raising $300 million of private equity.[4] When Conard retired in 2007, Bain Capital managed $75 billion of capital and had offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai.[4] His first acquisition was that of a pharmaceutical company for half a billion dollars. That same company later rose to more than $10 billion in value.[5]

While at Bain Capital, Conard took Waters Corporation, DDI, ChipPac, Innophos, and Sensata public and sat on their boards of directors.[6][7][8][9] He still sits on the board of Waters Corporation.[10]

Writing, speaking, and scholar career

Conard published Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong in May 2012.[11] The book was featured on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went on to become a New York Times top ten non-fiction bestseller.[12] Since its publication, Mr. Conard has made over 100 television appearances in which he has debated leading economists including Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Alan Krueger, Austan Goolsbee, and Jared Bernstein; journalists including Fareed Zakaria, Chris Hayes, and Andrew Ross Sorkin; and politicians such as Barney Frank, Howard Dean, and Eliot Spitzer.[13] Conard also debated Jon Stewart for 33 minutes, one of Stewart’s longest interviews.[14] The video of the debate has received nearly 100,000 views. He has also written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal,[15] The Washington Post,[16] Foreign Affairs,[17] Harvard Business Review,[18] Fortune,[19] and Politico,[20] among others.

While the New York Times predicted the book might become “the most hated book of the year,”[2] leading economists such as Greg Mankiw, Andrei Shleifer, Steven Levitt, Nouriel Roubini, Tyler Cowen, and Glenn Hubbard publicly endorsed the book.[21] In contrast to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal called the book “a full throttle defense of economic dynamism…refreshing at a time when so many take the failure of capitalism for granted.”[22] The New York Times described Unintended Consequences as “…arguing that growing income inequality shows the economy is working.” Timothy Noah, the author of The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality noted: “the biggest surprise, on opening Unintended Consequences, lies in discovering that this book isn't about income inequality at all.”[23] The book analyzes why the U.S. has outperformed other high-wage economies, explains the causes the financial crisis, and makes recommendations for accelerating growth in its aftermath.[11] Conard summarizes his book in a 23-minute video for The UP Experience.[24]

Because of the publicity surrounding the publication of his book, Conard was the tenth most searched author on Google in 2012.[25] Conard joined the American Enterprise Institute as a visiting fellow in 2012.[26] His work with AEI focuses on U.S. economic policy - in particular, on the effect of taxes, government policies, and finance on risk-taking and innovation.[1]

Political activities

Conard made a $1 million U.S. dollar contribution to the super PAC promoting Mitt Romney's candidacy in the U.S. Presidential Election 2012 through W Spann LLC, a shell corporation that rendered him anonymous. He immediately came forward to quell the controversy that arose.[27][28]

Personal life

Conard is married to Jill Davis, a two-time New York Times bestselling novelist and a former writer for the Late Show with David Letterman.[29]

References

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External links