I hate private equity.
They take any company they can get their hands on, gut it of any valuable assets, and turn it into a pale shadow of its former self.
For example:
If said company is, for example, a smallish, family-owned regional chain of retail tire shops and PE wants it, they will buy that company and all its assets by offering the original owners a price they can't refuse. Then, as part of their so-called "optimization", they will sell off the most valuable of those assets, such as real estate, for a quick profit to pay down any debt incurred by the purchase of the company (such as what usually happens in the course of a leveraged buyout), and rework whatever is left into a lean money making machine whose only purpose for being is to milk every customer to the greatest extent possible for the sole function of lining said PE executives' pockets.
Many employees deemed unnecessary will have been layed off, and whomever is left will be severely overworked, and in many cases underpaid. Virtually none of the money saved is reinvested into the company to improve whatever services or products they offer or to maintain in a safe and reasonable manner the buildings they reside in, quality takes a nosedive, the cosmetic, health and safety conditions of their stores deteriorates drastically, and those few remaining employees are demoralized and miserable due to being forced to work under such conditions.
Then, when the company's reputation is finally ruined, no longer has any customers and most of the remaining employees quit (or, perhaps the company gets sued because either a customer or employee got sick, injured and/or killed in an accident due to unsafe conditions, or the building is damaged or destroyed with the property owner(s) of said building is left holding the bag), the CE people shut down any physical operations at all stores, establish a holding company for any remaining intellectual property (branding) that they didn't already sell off (perhaps under a different name to mislead any lawyers or health and safety officials), and then make their money licensing said IP to the highest bidder(s) in perpetuity.
I may be a bit fuzzy on some of the details, but in my observations in following the slow but steady decline of once great companies like GE and, recently, Boeing, retail outlets like K-Mart, Sears, and innumerable others, and of course, Audacy, iHeart and many other big broadcasting/movie companies, some variation of this pattern unfortunately seems to applies to them all.
(Rant Mode off)
c
