General Discussion

Without regulation we see vulture capitalism. We see stores getting loaded with debt and then dismantled.

Valentina Dabos, senior campaign and research coordinator at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, told Newsweek: "While private equity firms often justify layoffs and restructuring as necessary for improving efficiency, the data on bankruptcies suggests a different reality. Private equity firms load companies with unsustainable amounts of debt and leave them financially vulnerable.

Research shows that private equity-owned firms are more likely to declare bankruptcy than their non-private-equity counterparts, often leading to mass layoffs that go beyond "streamlining" and instead reflect financial mismanagement. Additionally, last year saw record numbers of debt-funded dividends at PE-owned portfolio companies, a practice that enriches PE firms and hurts the financial stability of their portfolio companies.

If private equity's goal were to salvage struggling businesses, we would expect to see evidence of long-term operational improvements rather than a pattern of repeated failures. Instead, we see firms prioritizing short-term financial gains over sustainable business health, ultimately harming workers, customers, and communities. The argument that these firms prevent greater losses ignores the role they often play in accelerating a company's decline."