4 ms·

Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread

zerosizedweasle 1y ago
https://archive.ph/vS1z0 https://archive.ph/vS1z0
PessimalDecimal 1y ago
Private equity firms seem like the villains many imagine investment bankers to be. Like, actually cracking the bones and sucking the marrow of the little guys in small businesses. Discharging pension obligations, offshoring, cutting corners. But maybe that's an unfair point of view. Is there a steelman case to be made for PE? I listened to https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-plundering-the-u-s-economy/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl... but didn't come away with a rosier view of them.
- nradov 1y ago
  There are so many PE firms with such different practices that's it's difficult to make any generalized case for or against them. Ideally they provide liquidity for small business owners who want to sell and move on but lack other buyers. PE firms also do rescue many businesses that would have otherwise failed due to incompetent management or lack of capital: the mainstream press loves to hype up failures and abuses but seldom reports on successes. Defined benefit pension plans shouldn't be a thing in the first place: they're too risky for workers, employers, and taxpayers alike. All pensions should be replaced with defined contribution plans like 401(k) where assets are safely held in individual named accounts.
mwkaufma 1y ago
Let them perish.
darth_avocado 1y ago
The unfortunate reality of PE is that regardless of your opinion of them, your money is probably tied to them.
- dangus 1y ago
  Seems like that’s literally not true considering that most people can only invest in public exchange tradeable funds.
  - master_crab 1y ago
    Not directly. But pension funds, investment groups, insurance companies — organizations who everyday investors rely on — give them money. And thanks to the current administration you will soon be able to direct 401k money to them.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      The real problem here is the lack of accountability. We invented a huge pile of regulations forcing public firms to be transparent, largely because the lack of transparency was easy to abuse and small investors don’t have the resources to do their own investigatory work. Now those regulations are being undermined by this new backdoor approach, and so even public and regulated investments are becoming more risky. It’s a bad trend and it will only reverse when people inevitably follow the incentives and there’s a big crisis.
      - gruez 1y ago
        >Now those regulations are being undermined by this new backdoor approach, and so even public and regulated investments are becoming more risky. It’s a bad trend and it will only reverse when people inevitably follow the incentives and there’s a big crisis. It's hardly "backdoor" when pension funds and other institutions could always have bought private companies. If anything the recent shift to ETFs and passive investing is a move in the opposite direction. In the past such institutions would have managed their portfolios in-house, ie. private equity.
        matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I feel like it adds a huge layer of opacity. If you buy a private company, you have to monitor its financials and potentially report them. If you buy a private fund, you have to report the valuation of the fund. If the valuation of the fund just tends to go up (as many such funds do), you won’t necessarily know if this actually reflects the prospects of the underlying companies or just the impression of other investors. The impact of adding these layers is not necessarily efficiency (each layer of management adds more cost), but it is increasing distance from the messy short-term ups and downs of real businesses.
nine_zeros 1y ago
I mean, they miscalculated valuations. Who else would eat losses but them?
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Retail investors and anyone else unsophisticated enough to pay these inflated valuations.
Apreche 1y ago
Private equity hoovers up existing businesses that are mostly well functioning. If they fail, we suffer as those businesses we depend upon fail and disappear. Everything from big national chains to your local doctors office can be destroyed in this way. But if private equity succeeds, we also suffer. Private equity is… private. Normal people have our savings invested in public markets. We can’t easily invest in private equity, and we shouldn’t because it’s too risky. But imagine a world where every strong business goes private and only failing businesses are public. The wealthy take everything private so they don’t have to share the wealth. IMO any business over a certain size should be forced to be public and no option to go private again.
- bpt3 1y ago
  > Private equity is… private. Normal people have our savings invested in public markets. We can’t easily invest in private equity, and we shouldn’t because it’s too risky. Financial entities you rely on (pension funds, insurance companies, and universities among others) invest, and you may be getting access yourself thanks to Trump! > IMO any business over a certain size should be forced to be public and no option to go private again. What on earth is the rationale for this policy? If you build a successful company, you're required by law to give up control?
  - trod1234 1y ago
    I don't think there is a valid rationale for this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of armchair spectators that don't understand how the economy actually functions; and they've got brigades that go after people that do actually know who speak out (based on certain keywords). As a result, its totally not worth talking about since the point of no return has largely already come and gone and we're stuck in a hysteresis trap. People don't see how the things we are seeing today were predictable outcomes given choices made at the money-printer level (i.e. Fed/Private Banking). No deposit requirement, is no reserve money-printing. It always fails, but I'm sure someone will say... but this time will be different. Needless to say, any discussion on economics is basically flame bait these days with a lot of delusional people on both sides of the aisle. Fractional Banking (RIP, Circa 2020).
  - 1y ago
AfterHIA 1y ago
The people that are proprietors of these institutions count for less than 1% of the social economy in a large state where guns are legal. Please keep being greedy. You know where this is going.
bpt3 1y ago
This sounds very similar to the commercial real estate market. What do they have in common? High amounts of leverage, and holding periods of 5-7 years for assets. They're trying to sell assets bought with cheap money and a lower acceptable rate of return to buyers with higher financing costs and a higher risk free rate of return. They're going to be holding onto those assets for a while, until they either accept that they need to eat the loss to get liquid or their paper losses are inflated away.
DaveZale 1y ago
my alumni association has a related pe fund. Minimum personal wealth requirement to participate is 5 million usd. This is high risk high reward, and total loss is possible. I looked at some of the companies they underwrite and it's completely risky stuff that's ethically ambiguous.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
BillSaysThis 1y ago
My issue with most PE deals is that the PE firm doesn’t have enough skin in the deal. Look at, say, the EA deal where almost all of the purchase price is coming from debt on EA. This to me is wrong because the new owners have almost no incentive to build the business for the long term—EA is a strong operator but face layoffs and LOB closures just to service the new debt.
- gruez 1y ago
  >This to me is wrong because the new owners have almost no incentive to build the business for the long term—EA is a strong operator but face layoffs and LOB closures just to service the new debt. They have very strong incentive because debt holders have first dibs on the assets if EA goes belly up. Equity owners (ie. PE) are the last to get paid, so it's very much in their best interest that EA doesn't even lose a tiny bit of money, because such losses are magnified through leverage.
  - BillSaysThis 1y ago
    You’re assuming, or insinuating, the PE firms don’t immediately start paying themselves outsized management fees, bonuses, and the like.
    - gruez 1y ago
      And you're assuming, or insinuating that lenders don't care that the collateral for their loans are getting drained by the PE company. It's like saying buying a house is a free money machine because you can demolish it and strip out the copper.
    - bfg_9k 1y ago
      They don't receive bonuses until they exit.

https://archive.ph/vS1z0 https://archive.ph/vS1z0

Private equity firms seem like the villains many imagine investment bankers to be. Like, actually cracking the bones and sucking the marrow of the little guys in small businesses. Discharging pension obligations, offshoring, cutting corners. But maybe that's an unfair point of view. Is there a steelman case to be made for PE? I listened to https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-plundering-the-u-s-economy/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl... but didn't come away with a rosier view of them.

nradov 1y ago
There are so many PE firms with such different practices that's it's difficult to make any generalized case for or against them. Ideally they provide liquidity for small business owners who want to sell and move on but lack other buyers. PE firms also do rescue many businesses that would have otherwise failed due to incompetent management or lack of capital: the mainstream press loves to hype up failures and abuses but seldom reports on successes. Defined benefit pension plans shouldn't be a thing in the first place: they're too risky for workers, employers, and taxpayers alike. All pensions should be replaced with defined contribution plans like 401(k) where assets are safely held in individual named accounts.

mwkaufma 1y ago

Let them perish.

darth_avocado 1y ago

The unfortunate reality of PE is that regardless of your opinion of them, your money is probably tied to them.

dangus 1y ago
Seems like that’s literally not true considering that most people can only invest in public exchange tradeable funds.
- master_crab 1y ago
  Not directly. But pension funds, investment groups, insurance companies — organizations who everyday investors rely on — give them money. And thanks to the current administration you will soon be able to direct 401k money to them.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    The real problem here is the lack of accountability. We invented a huge pile of regulations forcing public firms to be transparent, largely because the lack of transparency was easy to abuse and small investors don’t have the resources to do their own investigatory work. Now those regulations are being undermined by this new backdoor approach, and so even public and regulated investments are becoming more risky. It’s a bad trend and it will only reverse when people inevitably follow the incentives and there’s a big crisis.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Now those regulations are being undermined by this new backdoor approach, and so even public and regulated investments are becoming more risky. It’s a bad trend and it will only reverse when people inevitably follow the incentives and there’s a big crisis. It's hardly "backdoor" when pension funds and other institutions could always have bought private companies. If anything the recent shift to ETFs and passive investing is a move in the opposite direction. In the past such institutions would have managed their portfolios in-house, ie. private equity.
      - matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I feel like it adds a huge layer of opacity. If you buy a private company, you have to monitor its financials and potentially report them. If you buy a private fund, you have to report the valuation of the fund. If the valuation of the fund just tends to go up (as many such funds do), you won’t necessarily know if this actually reflects the prospects of the underlying companies or just the impression of other investors. The impact of adding these layers is not necessarily efficiency (each layer of management adds more cost), but it is increasing distance from the messy short-term ups and downs of real businesses.

nine_zeros 1y ago

I mean, they miscalculated valuations. Who else would eat losses but them?

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Retail investors and anyone else unsophisticated enough to pay these inflated valuations.

Apreche 1y ago

Private equity hoovers up existing businesses that are mostly well functioning. If they fail, we suffer as those businesses we depend upon fail and disappear. Everything from big national chains to your local doctors office can be destroyed in this way. But if private equity succeeds, we also suffer. Private equity is… private. Normal people have our savings invested in public markets. We can’t easily invest in private equity, and we shouldn’t because it’s too risky. But imagine a world where every strong business goes private and only failing businesses are public. The wealthy take everything private so they don’t have to share the wealth. IMO any business over a certain size should be forced to be public and no option to go private again.

bpt3 1y ago
> Private equity is… private. Normal people have our savings invested in public markets. We can’t easily invest in private equity, and we shouldn’t because it’s too risky. Financial entities you rely on (pension funds, insurance companies, and universities among others) invest, and you may be getting access yourself thanks to Trump! > IMO any business over a certain size should be forced to be public and no option to go private again. What on earth is the rationale for this policy? If you build a successful company, you're required by law to give up control?
- trod1234 1y ago
  I don't think there is a valid rationale for this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of armchair spectators that don't understand how the economy actually functions; and they've got brigades that go after people that do actually know who speak out (based on certain keywords). As a result, its totally not worth talking about since the point of no return has largely already come and gone and we're stuck in a hysteresis trap. People don't see how the things we are seeing today were predictable outcomes given choices made at the money-printer level (i.e. Fed/Private Banking). No deposit requirement, is no reserve money-printing. It always fails, but I'm sure someone will say... but this time will be different. Needless to say, any discussion on economics is basically flame bait these days with a lot of delusional people on both sides of the aisle. Fractional Banking (RIP, Circa 2020).
- 1y ago

AfterHIA 1y ago

The people that are proprietors of these institutions count for less than 1% of the social economy in a large state where guns are legal. Please keep being greedy. You know where this is going.

bpt3 1y ago

This sounds very similar to the commercial real estate market. What do they have in common? High amounts of leverage, and holding periods of 5-7 years for assets. They're trying to sell assets bought with cheap money and a lower acceptable rate of return to buyers with higher financing costs and a higher risk free rate of return. They're going to be holding onto those assets for a while, until they either accept that they need to eat the loss to get liquid or their paper losses are inflated away.

DaveZale 1y ago

my alumni association has a related pe fund. Minimum personal wealth requirement to participate is 5 million usd. This is high risk high reward, and total loss is possible. I looked at some of the companies they underwrite and it's completely risky stuff that's ethically ambiguous.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

BillSaysThis 1y ago

My issue with most PE deals is that the PE firm doesn’t have enough skin in the deal. Look at, say, the EA deal where almost all of the purchase price is coming from debt on EA. This to me is wrong because the new owners have almost no incentive to build the business for the long term—EA is a strong operator but face layoffs and LOB closures just to service the new debt.

gruez 1y ago
>This to me is wrong because the new owners have almost no incentive to build the business for the long term—EA is a strong operator but face layoffs and LOB closures just to service the new debt. They have very strong incentive because debt holders have first dibs on the assets if EA goes belly up. Equity owners (ie. PE) are the last to get paid, so it's very much in their best interest that EA doesn't even lose a tiny bit of money, because such losses are magnified through leverage.
- BillSaysThis 1y ago
  You’re assuming, or insinuating, the PE firms don’t immediately start paying themselves outsized management fees, bonuses, and the like.
  - gruez 1y ago
    And you're assuming, or insinuating that lenders don't care that the collateral for their loans are getting drained by the PE company. It's like saying buying a house is a free money machine because you can demolish it and strip out the copper.
  - bfg_9k 1y ago
    They don't receive bonuses until they exit.