(FORTUNE Magazine) – The shakeup is officially over at Bain & Co., the once red hot Boston management consulting firm. In June W. Mitt Romney, 43, son of ex-Michigan governor and presidential candidate George Romney, was named CEO. Out is founder William Bain, 54, who remains chairman. The big news: As part of a deal struck with Romney, Bain and seven other executives will give back some of the roughly $200 million they collected by selling 30% of their shares to the private firm's ESOP in the mid-1980s. Because the ESOP borrowed the money to buy that stake, the giveback will cut interest costs 75%. Says Romney: ''With hindsight, the deal was clearly a mistake. We got tangled in our underwear.'' For a time last year it seemed the elastic might break altogether. The recession dried up fees from Bain's key market -- large corporate clients -- while the need to pay off the founders kept cash flowing out the door. The staff shrank from 1,300 in 1988 to 1,000. But internal griping about greedy managers never tarred Romney, a onetime Mormon missionary. He arrived in 1977, four years after the firm's creation and too late to share in the founding partners' windfall. As head of Bain's LBO and venture capital affiliate since 1984, he was distanced from the consulting side. His first investment fund generated a compound annual return of 70%. The results of a second fund aren't yet in. But early successes include several companies that the popular Romney turned around by deleveraging their 1980s-style balance sheets. Great practice, as it turns out.