Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed
Over the course of Bad Company, Greenwell follows four people whose lives have been altered by a private equity takeover. The history and policy analysis act as a scaffolding for these stories; it’s in these intimate portraits that the book truly shines. Though never stated outright, the experiences of Greenwell’s subjects act as a powerful foil to a certain kind of managerial thinking that is implicit at the heart of private equity’s pitch: that profits could only possibly matter to the people in charge of the ledgers, that employees need to be micromanaged, that businesses suffer because of a lack of commitment from the people who clock in and out every day. In other words, Greenwell managed to find a collection of characters utterly devoted to what they do.
Liz, an Alaskan mother trying to lift her family out of chronic instability, worked for the retail giant Toys “R” Us, which declared bankruptcy and axed 33,000 employees without severance when private equity–imposed debt made it impossible to keep shelves stocked. Liz loved working at Toys “R” Us so much that she got a tattoo of the company’s signature giraffe. As recounted by Greenwell, after a particularly satisfying customer service experience, a pair of new parents gave their baby her name. A physician named Roger abandoned a cushy job decades ago to practice medicine in rural Wyoming. Now in his eighties and retired, he reflects on his battle to maintain essential medical services, like maternity care, following a series of acquisitions. “You want to leave a place better than you found it,” he tells Greenwell through tears. Natalia, a Texas journalist born in Mexico, ping-ponged between private equity–owned papers, making less than $60,000 a year in Austin and maintaining significant debt to write stories that would resonate with younger, Spanish-speaking audiences. Greenwell also spent time with Loren, a parent whose private equity–backed low-income housing complex flooded, ejecting residents from their homes with no recourse. She is still handing her number out to residents of the building, helping them file complaints from afar.
These are not people who need dividends to commit. Throughout Bad Company they find creative ways to circumnavigate the constrictions placed on them by faceless billion-dollar firms. They work longer hours and organize their neighbors. They unionize and campaign. They leverage their tangible connections to their communities to combat people they’ve never met in gleaming Manhattan office towers they’ll never see. In comparison, the copy-paste labor private equity firms perform looks awfully lazy.
