A leveraged buy out like the one Bain Capital used here is often used to milk cashflow and value out of a business that is in a bad position. They essentially seized on the opportunity that Toys R Us' bad decisions left them in to buy them with debt and use them as an ATM. I suspect that Bain didn't care about letting them grow, and saw this as an opportunity to bleed out all value from them for their remaining years until they could file for bankruptcy and liquidate.