Bain Capital, the company founded by 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is apparently making a bid for Billabong. Bain has been allowed to take a look at the books with Billabong hoping it can extract a higher bid by playing them off against the current bidders, TPG. TPG’s offer of around $1.45 a share would value the group at about $695 million, way off the peak. But the emergence of two bidders likely means that these guys see some unrealised value in the company, or as Stephen Bartholomeusz of the Business Spectator put it, that “the market had come to regard the group as almost a basket case“. Read more over at the Business Spectator here.