Comment by WarmWash

Run from investing in PE, run as fast as you can.

I (and leaders at my PE-owned company) cannot say enough bad things about private equity. How anyone who managed to make money in their life decides PE is a good investment blows my mind.

We are now on our 5th PE firm in 10 years, and just completed a "PE lifecycle" of buy -> merge -> sell -> part out -> merge.

None of these PE firms bring anything to the table. Even the hundreds of billions AUM giants. They have zero interest in tangibly improving the company, and lots of interest in cheap window dressings meant to fool other PE firms. Not that they could do much else, because it's mostly business grads with minimal real world exposure, and hunger to be rich above all else.

The most critical thing to understand is that they pay themselves "advisory and oversight fees" for the incredibly difficult work of increasing sales targets 300%. These fees can eat 10% of our revenue, and is one click above theft. Trust me, they will lay-off 75% of the company before even considering cutting back their personal take. Never mind the fees they take from investors too. They bill both sides.

Also, if they kill some of the companies they acquire, it's the investors loss. It is not their loss. They still collect all their fees just the same.

There is a total misalignment between investors and PE firms, where PE firms just want to maximize their looting while investors think they are actually trying to improve the acquired companies. If the invesotrs do see gains, it's mostly because the firm successfully conned another firm into overpaying.

Run from investing in PE, run as fast as you can. Recently they changed the law to allow regular people to have PE in their retirement. They are running out of useful idiots, and want access to the general public. DO NOT FALL FOR IT