Before politics, Senator Romney was a successful businessman
Nobody can deny Romney didn’t have a good start in life. His father, George, was the chairman and CEO of American Motors. The motoring giant was saved from bankruptcy in the 1950s by his father and brought the company back to profitability. He also served as Michigan's 43rd governor from January 1, 1963, until January 22, 1969. Romney had a sizable fortune due to his father's passing in 1995, but he decided not to take it and instead gave it to charity.
Mitt Romney was a co-founder of Bain Capital, one of the most prosperous private equity investment companies in the nation, in 1984. He was the CEO of Bain Consulting prior to this when he helped the company survive the financial crisis. Successful investments by Bain Capital have been made in household names like Dunkin' Donuts and Staples. Experian's sale brought in $700 million for them and its partners, and the sale of Italy's Seat Pagine Gialle brought in over $1 billion. Deals like this made the company's executives immensely rich, and a conservative estimate of the Senator's net worth puts it at $250 million.
Due to his successful business career, Romney and his wife established a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars; as of 2011, their fortune remained in the region of $5 to $25 billion. Since 2003, the majority of it has been kept in blind trusts. There is also a blind trust in the names of the Romney children, which was valued at $100 million in 2012. The 1995-established trust enables the Romneys to distribute funds to heirs outside of their estate, allowing them to benefit from sophisticated tax planning strategies utilized by high-net-worth families to postpone or lower their tax liability. Romney has a SEP-IRA with a market value of $21 to $102 million. Romney holds some of his financial holdings in investments and accounts located abroad.
