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"Private Equity" is a bit too broad of a term to have a single explanation (i.e. there are a few different categories of PE strategy). In its purest form resem

by gen220 3y ago

"Private Equity" is a bit too broad of a term to have a single explanation (i.e. there are a few different categories of PE strategy). In its purest form resembling instance, PE is a decomposer. It takes a business that isn't particularly healthy (due to mismanagement, sector headwinds, etc.), and efficiently disintegrates it into raw material (various forms of capital, essentially) for eventual re-allocation elsewhere. It profits and reproduces as a side-effect of playing its role in the recycle of raw material. It's sad because a company that played a meaningful role for people and other companies is dying and being sold for parts, but it's the cycle of life – not every company is meant to endure indefinitely.

VerminOctopus1 3y ago
I don’t know why you’re trying to naturalize private equity behaviour. It’s not some immutable law of nature, it’s a shitty consequence of our current set of laws and economic system. Our society could be better.
- gen220 3y ago
  I mean, yeah, death is a shitty consequence of life. The executives and boards who sell to these kinds of private equity companies know exactly what they’re signing up for. It’s a parasitic relationship, it isn’t dignified, but it’s less wasteful in some global market sense than self-immolation (i.e. ceasing operations).
wjcroft 3y ago
Many of the brands involved existed for DECADES: Pyrex, CorningWare, Corelle, with fervent users of this durable, long lasting cookware, dinnerware.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And they will continue to exist. The name or Trade Mark has value. So those will be sold off to someone else, hopefully with the IP.
- gen220 3y ago
  As a sibling comment noted, you're essentially talking about the products, not the companies. They're distinct entities that are temporally correlated, but you should reason about them separately. It's possible to have a perfectly good and marketable product, and a terribly owned or operated company. In this case, while the company has given up the ghost, the products are still valuable. Them most likely outcome is that some other company will acquire those products/brands and continue to extract value from them on the other side of a bankruptcy. To do anything else would be to leave money on the table, which is not what PE owners do.
qball 3y ago
>It's sad because a company that played a meaningful role for people and other companies is dying and being sold for parts, but it's the cycle of life – not every company is meant to endure indefinitely. It's also worth noting that Instant Pot, Pyrex, etc. will almost certainly be back. Freedom Group's well-deserved bankruptcy (its PE-induced enshittification began in the mid-2000s with Cerberus Capital Group) and subsequent sale of Remington, Marlin, Bushmaster, etc. to other manufacturers in no way suggests their products were not financially viable, which is why the companies that acquired them are still making said products. Interestingly, just like Pyrex, these companies all face stiff competition from products they made more than a century ago that are still as capable as the day they were made. It's a tough go when you make products that last that long and where the market is already saturated with one's own products, and means that the industry isn't actually as large as their reputation would suggest (which is partially why we never see anything truly new from it- the other part is mostly just technological stagnation over those 100 years). As far as other firms ruined by PE (for instance, Sears)... well, they won't be back mainly because the decline was slow enough, and competitors were present enough (Amazon, in Sears' case) to make the only valuable thing about the company the cultural cachet its name held 30+ years ago.

by gen220 3y ago

VerminOctopus1 3y ago

I don’t know why you’re trying to naturalize private equity behaviour. It’s not some immutable law of nature, it’s a shitty consequence of our current set of laws and economic system. Our society could be better.

gen220 3y ago
I mean, yeah, death is a shitty consequence of life. The executives and boards who sell to these kinds of private equity companies know exactly what they’re signing up for. It’s a parasitic relationship, it isn’t dignified, but it’s less wasteful in some global market sense than self-immolation (i.e. ceasing operations).

wjcroft 3y ago

Many of the brands involved existed for DECADES: Pyrex, CorningWare, Corelle, with fervent users of this durable, long lasting cookware, dinnerware.

Ekaros 3y ago
And they will continue to exist. The name or Trade Mark has value. So those will be sold off to someone else, hopefully with the IP.
gen220 3y ago
As a sibling comment noted, you're essentially talking about the products, not the companies. They're distinct entities that are temporally correlated, but you should reason about them separately. It's possible to have a perfectly good and marketable product, and a terribly owned or operated company. In this case, while the company has given up the ghost, the products are still valuable. Them most likely outcome is that some other company will acquire those products/brands and continue to extract value from them on the other side of a bankruptcy. To do anything else would be to leave money on the table, which is not what PE owners do.

qball 3y ago

>It's sad because a company that played a meaningful role for people and other companies is dying and being sold for parts, but it's the cycle of life – not every company is meant to endure indefinitely. It's also worth noting that Instant Pot, Pyrex, etc. will almost certainly be back. Freedom Group's well-deserved bankruptcy (its PE-induced enshittification began in the mid-2000s with Cerberus Capital Group) and subsequent sale of Remington, Marlin, Bushmaster, etc. to other manufacturers in no way suggests their products were not financially viable, which is why the companies that acquired them are still making said products. Interestingly, just like Pyrex, these companies all face stiff competition from products they made more than a century ago that are still as capable as the day they were made. It's a tough go when you make products that last that long and where the market is already saturated with one's own products, and means that the industry isn't actually as large as their reputation would suggest (which is partially why we never see anything truly new from it- the other part is mostly just technological stagnation over those 100 years). As far as other firms ruined by PE (for instance, Sears)... well, they won't be back mainly because the decline was slow enough, and competitors were present enough (Amazon, in Sears' case) to make the only valuable thing about the company the cultural cachet its name held 30+ years ago.