David Rubenstein Quotes

I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

The better I get at investing in and helping companies, the result is more founders who are excited to work with me and more of my wonderful limited partners insisting I take piles of their loot to keep it all going.

Shaping the future is what drives me. Since I left politics, I'm very much interested in emerging markets.

In the same manner if any nation wasted part of its wealth, or lost part of its trade, it could not retain the same quantity of circulating medium which it before possessed.

We adopted a focused strategy of core businesses in Citicorp that play to our unique historic strengths as a global bank that will provide strong growth and attractive returns over the long-term... And we've identified non-core assets we have shed.

Building a road might create temporary jobs, but does it really create wealth if it doesn't also shorten commute times or otherwise make society better off?

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.

Well, actually, I manage a couple of stock portfolios or funds or whatever you want to call 'em, and I think I've done relatively well with them.

I think you'll do as well as most professionals. Most professionals don't beat the market. Let's not over-rate my industry. But if you have time, you can be in good mutual funds that have good records.

Many of the best firms historically in venture capital have been multi-sector.

A simple idea. And the man that worked on it, Mike Gabriel, doubled the value. Beautiful job. I should say triple. We have others like that, but, unfortunately, shorts, which are my favorite approach, are economically of no value.

You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk.

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

Pension funds, endowments, and private investors trust Mitt Romney's former company Bain Capital enough to hand it billions of dollars in assets.

What are we focused on? Return on equity. We don't need these great big tier one assets. I'm very happy with getting tier two, tier three assets; that's what Glencore has been good at.

The level of dynamism is a matter of how fertile the country is in coming up with innovative ideas having prospects of profitability, how adept it is at identifying and nourishing the ideas with the best prospects, and how prepared it is in evaluating and trying out the new products and methods that are launched onto the market.

People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.

When you're talking about capital and financial things, which I certainly pay a lot of attention to, I base those decisions on one question that I typically ask myself, which is 'Does it help us to build a better company?'

Savings is the fundamental input for capital investment, and capital investment is the primary ingredient in productivity.

You can be far more aggressive when you're making good profits.

The investors who generate big returns over five years, the guys they write books about, are supposed to keep winning, right? Well, they don't.

We should improve economic guidance and management as demanded by the developing reality.

To foster entrepreneurship, expansion and job creation, more leaders at all levels of government have to demonstrate some understanding of what it takes to build and grow businesses in the private sector.

At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund.