It’s called asset stripping. Been going on for years. Remember toys R us and sears.
Romney at Bain capital was quite successful
@ BC: Yep! Nailed it.
Private equity firms have destroyed so many companies it boggles the mind. Retail and restaurant chains especially. Now, I won’t necessarily defend a lot of these companies that were wiped out by PE, because they already sucked before they got bought up and stripped by these vultures. And really, a lot of them were superfluous and redundant anyway. We had far too much expansion of retail and restaurant companies during boom times, and when things finally got tight we found out who didn’t offer the value needed to continue standing on their own.
The usual cycle is a large company that has already lost its way, where quality of the product or experience (food and retail particularly) has declined, causing a loss of sales that puts the company into financial straits. Once that happens, and they need a bailout to stay solvent, PE is often the only option available. But it is a trojan horse, because it almost always kills the takeover target (after first stripping it of all remaining value). The moral of the story is to never allow your company to get into a position where a PE takeover is the only thing that will keep it afloat, because it is the kiss of death to get in bed with private equity. Part of that is setting aside the growth at all costs mentality, instead of always seeking ceaseless expansion via more locations (and the presumption that alone will increase profits).
The real problem though is that corporate management of large American corporations is often complete shit. These are the MBA groupthink assholes who always build more locations, cut costs until the product or service starts to suck enough to drive away customers, never have an original idea when it comes to attempted turn around plans, and all manage to jump ship with golden parachutes before the company they started the process of destroying either sells out to PE, or skips that step and just goes tits up straight away. Their entire “style” of management can probably be distilled down to about 10 bullet points that would be the same for virtually every large publicly traded company in the USA
The list of formerly respected and profitable firms that ended this way is into many thousands of examples now. I don’t see how you fix this without first changing the culture of short sighted, quarterly results driven corporate management, and finding a way to eliminate PE firms, which I view as nothing more than an asset stripping scheme. Of course, companies that end up dick punching themselves into mediocrity still need to be allowed to fail via bankruptcy, even without PE as a temporary backstop.
Big,
.
I thought they were individual companies, too.
Some digging exposed the facts:
* they are merely departments of divisions in one company.
.
The owners — aka RulingParasites — loot one division to support another division.
The home for many readers is fUSA, but it is merely one department in the division they call ‘government’.
RulingParasites are looting it, but honestly truly believe we can do nothing to stop them.
.
This is the flaw of those inbred half-wits.
They are unable to see beyond their scribblings in their magic book.
And it’s gone on so long that there is no escape from the financial reckoning that is headed our way.
The only thing to be done is prepare for a crash landing with what little grace period we can get. I think the 2024 election bought us a few years, maybe. But the clock is ticking, and the ability to stockpile is dwindling. Nobody is coming to save us.
Certainly. But I don’t know that Trump bought us much – if any – added time before the collapse. Based on his recent exploits in screwing up a couple of fundamental issues, and his desire to juice the economy with more deficit spending (the so called big, beautiful bill) and forced lower rates (thus his spat with Powell, and while I don’t like Powell, he is right to resist lowering rates now, as it will ultimately be inflationary), he’s going to end up doing a lot of economic damage. Apparently, Trump either doesn’t understand that, or just doesn’t care.
Maybe he (or his handlers) are crashing the economy on purpose to institute his Big Beautiful Central Bank Digital Currency.
Movie trivia – Who run barter town?
So let’s elect a billionaire president with a billionaire cabinet and have five of the ten wealthiest men in the world on stage at the inauguration.
At least he promised to release the Epstein files…….
If no one else will, I’ll disagree. What’s going on now is a reckoning. They’re turning off the tap on money being stolen and given to rogues and thieves. And they’re firing the criminal enterprises that have run our economy into the dirt. Don’t like it? Every month write a check for every penny in your bank account. No, write a check for hundreds more than every penny in your checking account. Be sure to track down the most useless piece of shit you can find and give it to him/her and make sure they cash it somewhere that’ll turn a blind eye to it being a rubber check. And when the bank comes calling with your penalties for writing bad checks, tell’em you were just doing your part to keep the moneywheel spinning.
It’s called asset stripping. Been going on for years. Remember toys R us and sears.
Romney at Bain capital was quite successful
@ BC: Yep! Nailed it.
Private equity firms have destroyed so many companies it boggles the mind. Retail and restaurant chains especially. Now, I won’t necessarily defend a lot of these companies that were wiped out by PE, because they already sucked before they got bought up and stripped by these vultures. And really, a lot of them were superfluous and redundant anyway. We had far too much expansion of retail and restaurant companies during boom times, and when things finally got tight we found out who didn’t offer the value needed to continue standing on their own.
The usual cycle is a large company that has already lost its way, where quality of the product or experience (food and retail particularly) has declined, causing a loss of sales that puts the company into financial straits. Once that happens, and they need a bailout to stay solvent, PE is often the only option available. But it is a trojan horse, because it almost always kills the takeover target (after first stripping it of all remaining value). The moral of the story is to never allow your company to get into a position where a PE takeover is the only thing that will keep it afloat, because it is the kiss of death to get in bed with private equity. Part of that is setting aside the growth at all costs mentality, instead of always seeking ceaseless expansion via more locations (and the presumption that alone will increase profits).
The real problem though is that corporate management of large American corporations is often complete shit. These are the MBA groupthink assholes who always build more locations, cut costs until the product or service starts to suck enough to drive away customers, never have an original idea when it comes to attempted turn around plans, and all manage to jump ship with golden parachutes before the company they started the process of destroying either sells out to PE, or skips that step and just goes tits up straight away. Their entire “style” of management can probably be distilled down to about 10 bullet points that would be the same for virtually every large publicly traded company in the USA
The list of formerly respected and profitable firms that ended this way is into many thousands of examples now. I don’t see how you fix this without first changing the culture of short sighted, quarterly results driven corporate management, and finding a way to eliminate PE firms, which I view as nothing more than an asset stripping scheme. Of course, companies that end up dick punching themselves into mediocrity still need to be allowed to fail via bankruptcy, even without PE as a temporary backstop.
Big,
.
I thought they were individual companies, too.
Some digging exposed the facts:
* they are merely departments of divisions in one company.
.
The owners — aka RulingParasites — loot one division to support another division.
The home for many readers is fUSA, but it is merely one department in the division they call ‘government’.
RulingParasites are looting it, but honestly truly believe we can do nothing to stop them.
.
This is the flaw of those inbred half-wits.
They are unable to see beyond their scribblings in their magic book.
And it’s gone on so long that there is no escape from the financial reckoning that is headed our way.
The only thing to be done is prepare for a crash landing with what little grace period we can get. I think the 2024 election bought us a few years, maybe. But the clock is ticking, and the ability to stockpile is dwindling. Nobody is coming to save us.
Certainly. But I don’t know that Trump bought us much – if any – added time before the collapse. Based on his recent exploits in screwing up a couple of fundamental issues, and his desire to juice the economy with more deficit spending (the so called big, beautiful bill) and forced lower rates (thus his spat with Powell, and while I don’t like Powell, he is right to resist lowering rates now, as it will ultimately be inflationary), he’s going to end up doing a lot of economic damage. Apparently, Trump either doesn’t understand that, or just doesn’t care.
Maybe he (or his handlers) are crashing the economy on purpose to institute his Big Beautiful Central Bank Digital Currency.
Movie trivia – Who run barter town?
So let’s elect a billionaire president with a billionaire cabinet and have five of the ten wealthiest men in the world on stage at the inauguration.
At least he promised to release the Epstein files…….
If no one else will, I’ll disagree. What’s going on now is a reckoning. They’re turning off the tap on money being stolen and given to rogues and thieves. And they’re firing the criminal enterprises that have run our economy into the dirt. Don’t like it? Every month write a check for every penny in your bank account. No, write a check for hundreds more than every penny in your checking account. Be sure to track down the most useless piece of shit you can find and give it to him/her and make sure they cash it somewhere that’ll turn a blind eye to it being a rubber check. And when the bank comes calling with your penalties for writing bad checks, tell’em you were just doing your part to keep the moneywheel spinning.