Comment by j-bos

Just a driveby speculator but my guess is PE dillutes interest in and responsibility for the businesses.

Individuals or family holdings are more likely to have concern for their reputations in addition to finances, public companies are more likely to scrutinized offsetting what would be their much lower reputational concerns. But PE is diffuse and often distant enough to eliminate human reputational concerns while being held to far lower stadards than public companies.