There are a bunch of different patterns (not all of which reduce quality), but usually when a company is sold to PE and quality goes down it's because the compa

There are a bunch of different patterns (not all of which reduce quality), but usually when a company is sold to PE and quality goes down it's because the company was in trouble, either because they weren't profitable (or were, but only on paper), or were in a liquidity crunch, or were facing down imminent changes that would make them unprofitable. People are often comparing to a situation where the company continued doing things that weren't sustainable long-term.