this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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Today I Learned

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Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.

Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.

The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.

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[–] F_State@midwest.social 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Pretty much nothing in "the economy" works like it does in theory. It's always way more complex so the people with the most power and money can squeeze more exploitation out of it. I really like how this guy explains it

https://www.facebook.com/reel/976701137942045

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1LcJjd6Wosw

He's got a whole series on Private Equity

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Sometimes teenagers ask me about how the stock market works.

I love explaining shorts, because the reaction is always “how does that even make sense?”

[–] F_State@midwest.social 2 points 22 hours ago

The short answer (ba dum, tisssss) is that some forms of mutual funds buy a little bit of every stock rather than picking and choosing. Then, for reasons never really made clear, they let other investors borrow those stocks as long as they return them later.

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[–] UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The actions taken by private equity companies seem very similar to those taken by organized crime syndicates when THEY take over a business

Odd, don't you think?

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Like in Goodfellas, cannibalizing their own community. Embezzle and steal everything you can, then torch the place for the insurance.

But in Goodfellas, the owner of the restaurant approaches the mafia and asks Paulie to "be a partner", so he can get Tommy to stop terrorizing the place AND running up tabs he has no intention of paying.

Imagine some short mafia type with a Napoleon complex walking around the Toys R Us aisles, knocking merchandise off the shelves while harassing kids and their mothers.

I betcha the equity firms approach with a silk tongue and Wall St technobabble jabberwocky. I know those CEO business types, the read their CEO magazines chock full of pseudoscience articles like, for example, determining a personality type via their handwriting style, the hooks and curves of their calligraphy. Corporate astrology, just as gullible to fancy jargon as the proverbial Man Down The Street.

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[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 70 points 1 day ago

A victim of the good ol leveraged buyout which should be fucking illegal right alongside stock buybacks.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 293 points 1 day ago (8 children)

This is one of those situations where it once again shows that:

  1. Private equity stakes in companies are bullshit and at the very least need to be utterly regulated to hell and back.
  2. More specifically, it should not be allowed to buy a company "on debt". If you want to buy somebody, you need cash-on-hand to do that. That's the only allowed form.
[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 67 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Selling property to rent it back should also be super illegal. Is there ever a time this makes sense. If you want to sell land to profit, close the fucking place, there’s no way it’ll suddenly be more profitable while renting.

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[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Time to kill private equity…..with crippling regulation and accountability of course

[–] ghen@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nah just make the rich people pay their taxes. Then they won't have money for stupid shit like this

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[–] plz1@lemmy.world 139 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yeah, this is the case for most "public to private" company moves, and other types of private equity acquisition deals. They are all just a massive shell game to liquidate a company's value and transfer it to those private equity companies. Vulture Capitalism

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 74 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Comical to read this when I just saw a $50 billion dollar sale of EA going private being bought by private equity firms, haha.

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[–] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 97 points 1 day ago (8 children)

And the same thing is happening to hospitals all over the US, which should fucking terrify you.

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It isn't the only company to die this way. Sears was cellar boxed the same as toys r us. It was what was intended for gamestop but the whole wallstreetbets thing happened and prevented it.

[–] shittydwarf@piefed.social 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The methods that they use to do this are crazy (installing a hostile executive, naked short selling, etc), the fact that they got caught while doing it to gamestop caused some crazy shit to be brought to light, and nearly wiped out the entire market

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[–] maxxadrenaline@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They told US TARGET killed Geoffrery!!!

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[–] Juice@midwest.social 12 points 1 day ago

DOGE used this same model on the US government.

Capitalism is not rational

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Yeah, the term "venture capitalist" is very negative in my mind because of how they destroy companies from the inside out to profit themselves. Fuck them.

[–] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 16 points 1 day ago

More like vulture capitalist.

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