The business press suggests potential internecine warfare between private equity and bond holders. For example:
Thornton, Emily. 2007. "Perform or Perish." Business Week (5 November): pp. 38-45.
Box p. 43: "50% of the U.S. companies that defaulted on their debt this year, half were owned by private equity companies."
And then:
Cimilluca, Dana. 2007. "Buyout Firms: Refined Rulers?" Wall Street Journal (20 November): p. C 3.
"Bondholders, after all, are natural enemies of private-equity firms, because the value of a company's bonds tends to plunge when a private-equity firm wants to buy it."
I think I can understand KKR's Henry Kravis. What he's about. He spells it out:
ReplyDelete“Look, don't congratulate us when we buy a company, congratulate us when we sell it.”
and
"Since we formed the firm in 1976, we've bought some 38 different companies, and we spent about $65 billion, buying these different companies.
But this is where Henry gets confused:
You only have one thing to sell in life, and that's yourself.
Henry Kravis
Oh well. All these people working twice as hard, for a paycut and then losing their jobs after all. Where would Henry get the money to patronise American public television and art museums without all their effort?