Is Private Equity (PE) plundering our economy? The Freakonomics Podcast dives into this mess and generally says “yes”. The chief doomsdayer interviewed is Brendan Ballou, an attorney at the US Dept of Justice and author.
I agree with much of his narrative. He correctly points out that PE’s footprint is becoming massive. For instance, the largest three US PE firms ( Carlyle, KKR and Blackstone) own companies employing 1.5 million people, making them the 3rd, 4th and 5th largest employers in the US behind Walmart and Amazon.
Brendan goes on to detail many instances where PE deals have trashed companies leading to their demise. Of course, he offers no metrics as to how PE performs generally against other benchmarks. This is all anecdotal.
Here’s my take on the subject.
The small guy. In most cases, a family or privately run business requires the owner to put up their own capital and reputation. If they don’t take care of their customers and employees they quickly falter and can go under. They have their own skin in the game. Making a profit is certainly a key driver, but not the only driver.
Publically owned companies of which there are thousands, have management whose primary allegiance is to their stockholders (who are generally profit-motivated above all else). Of course, if they screw their customers or employees, this impacts their operations, and profitability and leads to the company’s Board of Directors finding new management. Ergo, the management in charge while profit-motivated, needs to answer to someone above them in “real-time”.
PE deals don’t work that way. Firms like KKR raise money with no guarantees of anything. Generally, investors hope to get cashed out in 4-5 years, but that can easily take longer (or not at all). These guys can’t sell their investments in a secondary market (like stocks) nor can they fire management. They are helpless passengers along for the ride. KKR, charges a whopping 2% fee every year whether the investment does well or not. Ergo there’s a definite lack of accountability.
Of course in the long run, investors may take their money elsewhere for future deals, but that’s a long way off. Until recently the PE space was flush with capital; too much money chasing too few deals, so management companies could raise mountains of money and avoid thinking about the future.
Of course, the future for these guys now looks grim. PE deals have been built on the foundation of cheap interest rates, that allowed them to borrow huge amounts of money to fund acquisitions. Those days are gone and I suspect PE’s ability to keep gobbling up companies may be severely diminished.
Would I ever invest in PE. NO! It’s for suckers.
PS. PE companies have recently been buying up medical practices. That’s a marriage made in hell. PE and medicine don’t mix. It’s one thing to mess up a company's customer service or product offerings, but offering substandard care is something else. There’s a good reason the government licenses physicians and regulates healthcare. Do I trust some unscrupulous PE guy to do that. Sure!
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