Bain's Businesses: Romney's Company Owns Everything From Child Care to Pizza

July 18, 2012 -- intro: While candidates and pundits bicker over the exact date that Mitt Romney handed over the reins at Bain Capital, Americans across the country do not have to do much searching to find the businesses that Bain owns.

From Bright Horizons child care to Burger King, the private equity investment firm has a substantial stake in dozens of companies that, combined, are worth $60 billion, according to the Bain Capital website.

But with creating jobs as the No. 1 issue for this year's presidential candidates, the debate still rages between the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign about whether the presumed GOP nominee was a "job creator" or a "corporate raider" during his 14-year tenure at the helm of Bain Capital.

Romney oversaw Bain Capital's investments in more than 150 companies since he helped to create the private equity group in 1984 as an offshoot of the consulting firm Bain & Company, where Romney worked for seven years.

And while Republicans and Democrats fight to control the narrative over Romney's resume, the facts point to a mixed bag of soaring successes and battered bankruptcies that continues today.

Here's a look at some of the companies that been in Bain's hands both during and after Romney's stint as CEO.

quicklist: 1title: Bright Horizons Family Solutionstext: When the Bright Horizons child care provider was still just an in-home start-up in 1986, Bain Capital, under Romney's direction, was one of it's original investors. Romney has touted the company as an example of the jobs he created at the helm of Bain.

Nine years after Romney relinquished control over management decisions at Bain, the company bought Bright Horizons for $1.3 billion.

Unlike some of Bain's other company takeovers, which resulted in some domestic job cuts, Bright Horizons has added 880 employees nationwide since Bain bought the company. It now employs more than 15,000 people in the U.S.

While the Obama campaign has launched a full-throated attack on Romney's record at Bain, Michelle Obama commended the Bain-owned Bright Horizons child care center for implementing a checklist of healthy initiatives from her Let's Move campaign to end childhood obesity last year, as the Daily Caller first pointed out.

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quicklist: 1title: Domino's Pizzatext:When Domino's founder Thomas S. Monaghan retired in 1998 he sold a "significant portion" of his pizza company to Bain Capital, Monaghan told the New York Times.

As Bain's interim CEO, Romney personally signed the $1.1 billion check to acquire Domino's Pizza. Bain would end up making a staggering 500 percent return on their investment over the next 12 years, the Boston Globe reported.

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quicklist: 8title: Toys 'R' Ustext: Bain teamed up with another private equity firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and real estate developer Vornado Realty Trust to buy Toys "R" Us in 2005 for about $6 billion, the New York Times reported at the time.

Since Bain took over partial ownership in 2005, after Romney left the company, Toys "R" Us has maintained roughly the same number of stores, with about 1,600 retail locations worldwide.

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quicklist: 9title: KB Toystext: While Toys "R" Us left a positive mark on the Bain books, its rival toy retailer KB Toys met a far bleaker fate. KB Toys filed for bankruptcy in 2004, four years after Bain took over the company.

A super PAC supporting Romney's GOP primary rival Newt Gingrich sought to tie Romney to the jobs lost when KB Toys' closed its 1,200 stores in its 28-minute documentary film "King of Bain."