An absolutely amazing (damning) piece on private equity in Forbes, March 13: “Private Inequity.” I think it’s Pulitzer quality. The privatizers often take a sagging company private, dump a ton of people, issue a ton of debt in order to pay themselves back instantly, add in stratospheric “management fees” … and then return it to public status (further lining their pockets) or drop it into Chapter 11. I’ve not come close in that description to pinning down the slime and double-dealing—some of it sounds at least as fiendish as Enron.
