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William Bain was born on July 30, 1937 in Johnson City, Tennessee, to William Worthington Bain Sr. and his wife, Ruby Kathleen Bain.
His father was a small food wholesaler who had little formal education and came from a farming family with eleven siblings. He graduated from Science Hill High School in 1955.
Later, he attended East Tennessee State College, majoring in engineering, for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt University. He graduated in 1959, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors, with a degree in history.
Bain briefly worked at a steel fabricating company, where he'd held summer jobs, before returning to Vanderbilt in 1960 to work as the school's director of development at the age of 26.
He formed Bain Capital, a private equity firm, in 1984, and appointed Mitt Romney, one of the partners at Bain & Company, to be Bain Capital's first CEO.
After leaving Bain, he was chairman of the board of Bain Willard Companies, L.P., which he co-founded in 1993 with Ralph R. Willard, President of Bain. He was also a director of Hinckley Yachts.
Bain was a longtime trustee of several children’s charities in Boston, including Children’s Hospital Boston, The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and the Posse Foundation. He also served on the board of trust of Vanderbilt University. And was a trustee of the Naples Children and Education Foundation in Naples.
Bain was married three times and fathered four children.
He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and died aged 80 at his home in Florida in early 2018.
