These are the plunderers : how private equity runs--and wrecks--America
Gretchen Morgenson (Author), Joshua Rosner (Author)
In this book, the authors investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, from Leon Black's Apollo to Stephen Schwarzman's Blackstone - exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, then bleed them of assets and profits. These firms say they are saviors of troubled businesses, enhancing their operations to make them more efficient, better able to serve customers, and keep workers employed. But the authors reveal how, with help from federal and state governments, private equity actually acquires healthy companies and funds the purchases - and their own instant repayments - with so much debt that it sickens the business. To meet the interest payments on the debt, the firms gut the acquired company through the sale of assets or businesses, then cut costs by laying off employees and reducing worker costs like healthcare and retirement benefits. After the financiers have extracted their profits, the companies often collapse in bankruptcy; in fact, fully 20% of companies taken over by private equity file for bankruptcy - which is 10 times the failure rate of other takeovers. Companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the financiers: patients are more likely to die; renters are more likely to be evicted; companies are more likely to go bankrupt; healthcare costs are higher at private equity-owned operations; private-equity backed newspapers are less likely to report on local issues, which leads to a decline in local election participation; and retirees from private industry - as well as school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers - have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. This book investigates the greed in private equity and how its predatory practices gut industries, paychecks, and worsen the lives of everyday people. -- Provided by publisher
Print Book, English, 2024
First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition
Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York, NY, 2024