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IPO at $15, peaked at $23.53, going private at $7. LGP owned 67% the whole time. Public market investors lost 50%+.

$2B → $3.3B → $4.7B over 9 years. Each PE owner sold at a higher price. Each layer added more debt.

$5.7B → $17B in ~2 years. Veritas/Elliott tripled their money. H&F and Bain are the bag-holders at peak-era price.

Seven PE owners, two bankruptcies. PE extracted $750M in profits while debt went from $164M to $1.3B. The company still exists as a shell.

$3.1B LBO → bankruptcy → new PE owners → bankruptcy AGAIN. The bag got passed twice and is still deflating.

$600M → $1B → $1.8B → $4.6B. Four ownership cycles. Three IPOs. Each time more debt.

Massive LBO, $15B debt, repeated refinancings, continuation fund to avoid marking the loss. The definition of 'marked to fantasy.'

$9.9B LBO with $7B debt. COVID + No Surprises Act. $40M missed interest payment. KKR lost the $3.5B bet.

Cerberus quadrupled investment, sold real estate, left company to die. $290M unpaid wages, $1B unpaid vendor bills, $6.6B lease obligations.

$16.8B LBO ($15.3B debt / $1.5B equity). Stock lost 90%+. Technology disruption + impossible debt load.

Analysts 'understandably wary of investing in a debt-laden company that has passed through so many private equity owners.' Acquired Legoland, merged with Madame Tussauds.

Paramount tried to sell to Penguin Random House for $2.2B but DOJ antitrust suit killed it. Sold to KKR at a $600M discount. KKR loaded debt onto a publishing business with shrinking margins. Classic PE playbook: buy at distressed seller price, lever up, cut costs.

$34B take-private — the largest PE-backed healthcare deal ever. Three mega-firms needed to split the equity check. Heavily levered medical supply distributor in a margin-compressed industry. The Mills family took chips off the table; PE is holding the bag at peak multiples.

Intel bought for $7.7B, spun 51% to TPG at $4.2B, IPO'd at $8.6B, taken private again at $14B by Thoma Bravo consortium. Four owners in 12 years. Each pass inflated the price. Consumer antivirus is a shrinking market competing with free built-in OS security.

Taken private at $4.5B by Thoma Bravo + Silver Lake, IPO'd in 2018. Then the Sunburst hack — one of the worst nation-state cyberattacks in history — hit while Silver Lake was still a major holder. Silver Lake dumped $315M in stock 6 days before public disclosure. SEC investigated the suspicious timing. The company whose IT monitoring tools were embedded in 18,000+ government and corporate networks became the attack vector.

JAB took Panera private for $7.5B at 20x EBITDA — a nosebleed multiple for a fast-casual chain. Merged with Einstein Bagels, Caribou Coffee, and Au Bon Pain to create 'Panera Brands.' Planned SPAC IPO collapsed. Same-store sales declining. The Charged Lemonade wrongful death lawsuits added reputational damage. JAB paid a public-market premium and got a private-market headache.

The poster child for PE destruction. KKR, Bain, and Vornado took Toys R Us private for $6.6B using $5.3B in debt (80% leverage). Annual interest payments exceeded $400M — more than the company's annual capex. Couldn't invest in stores or e-commerce while Amazon ate the business. Filed Chapter 11 in 2017, attempted restructuring, then liquidated entirely in 2018. 30,000 workers lost jobs. $75M severance fund raised after public outrage (vs $470M in advisory fees PE firms collected). KKR and Bain still made money on fees.

Golden Gate and Blum took Payless private for $1.3B, loaded it with debt, extracted dividends. First bankruptcy in 2017 closed 700 stores. Emerged, then went bankrupt AGAIN in 2019, liquidating all 2,100+ remaining stores. 16,000 jobs eliminated. The Payless name was later licensed for international markets — a zombie brand stripped of everything but the logo.

Three bankruptcies across two decades, each time a different PE owner stripped value and passed the carcass to the next buyer. Sun Capital bought it out of the first bankruptcy, loaded debt, went bust again. Golden Gate / CCMP picked up the pieces, sold to Jos. A. Bank which itself went bankrupt under Tailored Brands. SPARC Group grabbed it for pennies and is now liquidating. The brand that once defined Pacific Northwest outdoor style reduced to a licensing deal.

Bain Capital bought Gymboree for $1.8B in 2010, loaded it with over $1B in debt. Annual interest ate all the cash flow. Filed Chapter 11 in 2017, closed 350 stores, emerged with reduced debt. Filed AGAIN in 2019 — just 15 months later — and liquidated entirely. 900+ stores closed, 10,000+ jobs lost. The Children's Place bought the brand name for $76M. Bain extracted fees throughout. The kids' clothing chain never had a chance under that debt load.

Summit sold to JAB at 4.5x what they paid — in just 5 years. JAB paid 22x EBITDA at peak vet-consolidation mania. Then the FTC blocked JAB's further acquisitions, killing the roll-up growth story. Planned IPO scrapped. JAB is now sitting on a 6x levered platform that can't grow by acquisition and faces regulatory headwinds. The vet-roll-up thesis depended on infinite consolidation — the music stopped.

Ontario Teachers' sold to KKR at nearly 3x their cost. KKR levered it to 7.9x with a massive unitranche from Blue Owl and Ares — two of the biggest private credit lenders. The dental roll-up model is the same playbook as vet, car wash, and dermatology: acquire, lever, raise prices, acquire more. At 7.9x leverage, there's zero margin for error. Blue Owl and Ares are the real risk-holders here, not KKR.

Tiger Infrastructure incubated Sunlight, then dumped it into a $1.3B SPAC at peak solar-lending mania in 2021. Stock collapsed 95%+ within 18 months. Rising interest rates destroyed the point-of-sale solar loan economics. Filed Chapter 11 in October 2023. Securities fraud class actions allege SPAC projections were fabricated. The PE-to-SPAC pipeline in one chart: build it, hype it, dump it on retail.

Golden Gate Capital bought Red Lobster from Darden for $2.1B in 2014, then immediately did a $1.5B sale-leaseback of ALL the restaurant real estate. Golden Gate made its money back on the real estate deal alone and left the operating company paying rent to its own former properties. Thai Union (a shrimp supplier) bought the operating company in 2020. Without owned real estate as a buffer, the chain had no margin for error. When the 'Endless Shrimp' promotion lost $11M in one quarter, it was the final straw. Filed Chapter 11 in May 2024, closing 87 locations overnight. The PE playbook: strip the assets, pass the shell, let someone else go bankrupt.

TPG and Leonard Green took J.Crew private for $3B in 2011 with $1.6B in debt. Added more debt to fund Madewell. Creative direction suffered as PE demanded margin extraction. Couldn't invest in stores or brand. Filed Chapter 11 in May 2020 — the first major retailer to fall during COVID. Debt-to-equity swap wiped out TPG/LGP. Anchorage Capital and GSO took over. The iconic American brand reduced to a PE shell game. TPG and Leonard Green collected $124M in fees on a deal that destroyed $3B.

TPG/Warburg bought Neiman for $5.1B in 2005, piled on debt, sold to Ares/CDPQ for $6B in 2013 — the ultimate hot potato pass. Ares/CDPQ added MORE debt and extracted a $500M dividend. When luxury spending softened, $5B in debt was unsurvivable. Filed Chapter 11 in 2020. Emerged only to be merged into 'Saks Global,' which is itself now running out of cash. Three PE ownership cycles, one bankruptcy, and the debt mountain only grows.

CD&R/Carlyle/Merrill took Hertz private for $15B in 2005 with $12.5B in debt — one of the most leveraged LBOs ever. IPO'd quickly but the debt remained. Filed Chapter 11 in 2020. Emerged under Knighthead/Certares in 2021 with an insane plan to buy 100,000 Teslas. The EV fleet was a disaster — maintenance costs 3x ICE vehicles, depreciation cratered. Sold the EVs at massive losses. Stock went from $35 (2021 peak) to under $3. The same company destroyed twice by leverage and hubris.

The worst-timed LBO in history. Bain and THL took Clear Channel private for $24B at the absolute peak in 2008 with $20B+ in debt. Radio advertising immediately cratered. Ten years of interest payments bled the company dry while digital ate the business. Filed the largest radio bankruptcy in history in 2018 with $16B in debt. Emerged as iHeartMedia but the business model was already obsolete. Bain and THL collected $600M+ in advisory and management fees on a deal that destroyed $24B in value.

The single largest leveraged buyout in history at the time — $45B to take TXU private. KKR, TPG, and Goldman bet that natural gas prices would stay high. Instead, the shale revolution cratered gas prices by 70%. With $40B+ in debt, the company couldn't survive even modest commodity declines. Filed the largest PE-backed bankruptcy ever in 2014 with $49.7B in liabilities. KKR and TPG each lost $4B+. Goldman lost $1B+. Advisory banks still collected $300M in fees on the deal. The bet was wrong on day one.

KKR bought Samson Resources for $7.2B in 2011, betting on rising oil and gas prices. Instead, shale oversupply and collapsing commodity prices destroyed the thesis. Filed Chapter 11 in September 2015 with $4.2B in debt. KKR's $4.1B equity check — the largest in fund history at the time — was completely wiped out. The Schusterman family sold at the peak and walked away with $7.2B. KKR was left holding worthless drilling rights in Oklahoma. Same mistake as TXU: betting on commodity prices with borrowed money.

Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus for $7.4B in 2007 — paying Cerberus to take it. Cerberus promised 'operational transformation.' Instead, the financial crisis hit and Chrysler collapsed in 18 months. Required $12.5B in government bailout funds. Cerberus lost its entire equity investment. Fiat got Chrysler essentially for free. The PE firm that specializes in 'turnarounds' couldn't manage a car company through a single recession. The government and taxpayers ate the loss.

Apollo and TPG bought Harrah's for $30.7B in 2008 — the largest casino LBO ever — with $24B in debt. When the financial crisis crushed Las Vegas, the debt was unsurvivable. Apollo structured a complex OpCo/PropCo split to protect some assets. The operating company filed the largest hospitality bankruptcy in history in 2015. Creditors accused Apollo of 'looting' the company through intercompany transactions. Apollo and TPG collected $1.2B+ in fees and dividends while investors lost everything. Apollo eventually made money on the PropCo side. The workers and creditors did not.

Cerberus bought Albertsons out of the Supervalu breakup for cheap, consolidated with Safeway and other chains, extracted $4B+ in special dividends before IPO'ing in 2020. The Kroger merger that would have been the ultimate exit was blocked by the FTC in 2024. One of the rare PE cases that survived — but only because Cerberus stripped so much cash out that it didn't matter what happened to the stock. The grocery workers who had pensions cut and wages frozen subsidized Cerberus's returns.

One of the foundational PE horror stories. KKR bought Safeway in 1986 for $4.2B, one of the first mega-LBOs. To service $3.4B in debt, Safeway laid off 63,000 workers, closed 1,100 stores, and slashed wages for remaining employees. Multiple worker suicides reported. The company eventually re-IPO'd and survived, but the human cost was staggering. 30 years later, Cerberus bought it through the Albertsons merger and ran the same playbook: leverage, cost cuts, dividend recaps. History repeating.

KKR took Dollar General private for $7.3B in 2007 and IPO'd in 2009. Market cap later exceeded $50B. KKR made ~5x on their equity. But the 'success' came from expanding aggressively into food deserts and low-income areas, often becoming the only option. OSHA fined Dollar General more than any other US employer for safety violations. Worker pay remained near minimum wage. The PE success metric is IRR, not whether communities are better off. KKR's best deal also happens to be one of the most-fined companies in America.

Three PE firms (Bain/Carlyle/THL) bought Dunkin' for $2.4B in 2006, loaded it with debt, extracted dividends, and IPO'd in 2011. The franchise-heavy model (no company-owned stores) meant the debt was more manageable. Roark Capital's Inspire Brands took Dunkin' private again for $11.3B in 2020 at 18x EBITDA. Now part of a mega-restaurant platform. 5x price inflation over 14 years. The current $11.3B bet depends on perpetual franchise growth from a mature brand.

The largest LBO in history at the time — $33B. KKR and Bain took HCA private, loaded it with $28B in debt, then re-IPO'd within 5 years. Made ~3x their money. But the 'value creation' was: aggressive Medicare upcoding (DOJ investigated repeatedly), nurse-to-patient ratio cuts, ED wait time gaming, and cherry-picking profitable procedures. HCA paid $2B+ in fraud settlements over two decades. The PE playbook applied to hospitals: same financial engineering, but the 'cost cuts' affect whether patients live or die.

KKR bought First Data for $29B in 2007 — one of the largest LBOs ever. The payments processing company was loaded with $24B in debt. KKR extracted $4.4B in dividends before selling to Fiserv for $22B — a headline loss. But KKR still made money because the dividend recaps and fees exceeded the equity loss. The company itself generated negative value under PE ownership. This is how the PE fee model works: you can destroy value and still collect your carry.

Four of the world's largest PE firms teamed up to buy Freescale for $17.6B in 2006 — the largest tech LBO at the time. Loaded with $12B in debt on a cyclical semiconductor business. The 2008 crisis crushed chip demand. Near-bankruptcy in 2009, survived through debt exchanges. Sold to NXP in 2015 for $11.8B — a $5.8B loss from the LBO price. The consortium collected hundreds of millions in fees while the business was strangled by interest payments. Semiconductors need massive R&D investment; PE gave it massive debt service instead.

SEVEN PE firms needed to buy SunGard for $11.3B. The largest PE club deal by number of sponsors. Loaded with $7.2B in debt. Cloud computing disrupted the on-premise financial software model, and the company couldn't invest in technology under the debt load. Sold piecemeal — FIS acquired the financial services unit for $9.1B (below LBO price), other divisions sold or shuttered. When seven of the world's smartest firms all agree on a deal and still lose money, maybe the model is the problem.

Carlyle took CommScope private in 2011, re-IPO'd in 2013, but maintained control. Under Carlyle's direction, CommScope acquired ARRIS International for $7.4B in 2019, funded almost entirely with debt. The ARRIS deal was supposed to be transformative. Instead, it added $9.5B in total debt to a company with declining revenues. Stock dropped from $38 to under $3. Carlyle exited with a profit from early share sales. The public market shareholders and employees are holding the bag on a debt-fueled acquisition that destroyed value.

The phone insurance company has been through multiple PE ownership cycles, each time adding more debt and extracting more dividends. PE sponsors have extracted $6B+ in dividend recaps from Asurion. Current debt exceeds $12B on a business that relies on people breaking their phones. As phone durability improves and replacement cycles lengthen, the business model is slowly eroding. But PE already got their money out — the debt holders are the ones at risk. A masterclass in using leverage to extract value while shifting risk.

While not a traditional LBO, Valeant was the PE playbook applied to a public pharma company: acquire aggressively with debt, slash R&D, jack up drug prices. ValueAct Capital drove the strategy from the board. At its peak, Valeant was worth $90B. Then the drug pricing scandal, accounting fraud revelations, and Philidor pharmacy scheme collapsed the stock 97%. Bill Ackman lost $4B. Total market cap destruction exceeded $80B. The company survives as Bausch Health, still buried under $20B+ in debt. The PE-style 'acquire and extract' model applied to pharmaceuticals — with human health as collateral.

Blackstone took TeamHealth private for $6.1B in 2017, loading it with $4B in debt. The physician staffing model relied on aggressive out-of-network billing — charge patients inflated rates, knowing insurance would pay a fraction. The 2022 No Surprises Act killed that revenue stream overnight. TeamHealth couldn't service its debt without the billing arbitrage. Debt trades at 50-60 cents. Blackstone's equity is likely worth pennies. The same fate as KKR's Envision: PE took a healthcare company private, levered it to the sky, and got wiped out by regulatory change. Healthcare is not a car wash.

PE-incubated primary care rollup went public through a SPAC at $4.4B valuation in 2020. Acquired 200+ primary care clinics targeting Medicare Advantage patients in Florida. CVS Health offered $6B but walked away after discovering accounting irregularities. SEC investigated. Filed Chapter 11 in February 2024 with $2.3B in liabilities. InTandem Capital made a fortune selling into the SPAC. Retail SPAC investors lost everything. The PE-to-SPAC-to-bankruptcy pipeline strikes again.

BC Partners bought PetSmart for $8.7B in 2015 — the largest pet industry deal ever. The hidden gem was Chewy, the online pet retailer PetSmart had acquired for $3.4B. BC Partners IPO'd Chewy in 2019 at $8.8B, essentially making their entire money back on a subsidiary. But PetSmart itself was left with $6B+ in debt. The financial engineering worked for BC Partners — they extracted value through the Chewy IPO — but PetSmart the actual business is still saddled with leverage from the LBO. Classic PE value extraction.

Avis Budget survived the PE-adjacent ownership cycle through Cendant but became a meme stock favorite in 2021 when retail traders pushed the stock from $20 to $545. The company had been a serial target of activist investors using PE-style leverage tactics. After the meme stock insanity, Avis tried to capitalize on the Hertz EV playbook, ordering Teslas, then pulled back when they saw Hertz's losses. The car rental industry embodies the PE model: commoditized service, heavy fleet debt, zero pricing power. Every cycle, the debt grows and the margins shrink.

Five PE firms took Aramark private for $8.3B in 2007, loaded it with debt, extracted dividends, and re-IPO'd in 2014. The food service company's stock has gone essentially nowhere since the re-IPO. The PE firms made their money on management fees, transaction fees, and dividend recaps during the private period. Public market investors who bought at the re-IPO got a levered food service company with thin margins and massive debt. The PE owners were selling, not buying, at the re-IPO. That tells you everything.

Silver Lake and Michael Dell took Dell private for $24.9B in 2013. Unlike most PE deals, the founder stayed and actually ran the business. Dell acquired EMC for $67B (the largest tech deal ever), then returned to public markets. Silver Lake made ~3x. But this is the exception that proves the rule: PE worked because the founder was in charge, not financial engineers. Dell succeeded despite the PE model, not because of it. Silver Lake's contribution was the financing structure. Dell's contribution was actually running the company.

Blackstone bought Hilton for $26B in July 2007 — months before the financial crisis. The deal was immediately underwater. Hilton's value dropped to $5-6B by 2009. Blackstone was forced to inject $800M in equity and renegotiate $20B in debt. By all rights, this should have been a catastrophic loss. Instead, the global travel recovery and Chris Nassetta's management saved it. Blackstone IPO'd Hilton in 2013 and eventually booked $14B in profit. Blackstone credits their 'operational expertise.' The truth is they bought at the worst possible time and got bailed out by the longest bull market in history. Survivorship bias is not a strategy.

CD&R and KKR bought US Foods for $7.1B in 2007. Their exit strategy was a merger with Sysco that would have created a food distribution monopoly. The FTC blocked the Sysco merger in 2015, forcing an IPO instead. After nine years of PE ownership, the returns were modest at best. The leverage added during the PE period constrained the company's ability to invest and compete. This is what happens when the exit plan depends on antitrust approval that never comes. PE's 'plan A' was a monopoly, and there was barely a plan B.

Onex bought Kodak's Health Group for $2.55B in 2007, renaming it Carestream. The thesis was healthcare imaging would be recession-proof. Instead, digital disruption and hospital consolidation compressed margins. The $1.8B debt load was impossible to service. After multiple rounds of debt restructuring, Onex eventually did a distressed exchange in 2022 that effectively acknowledged the equity was worthless. 15 years of PE ownership, and the business is smaller than when Onex bought it. Another case of PE buying a 'stable' healthcare business and loading it with debt it couldn't sustain.

TPG and Silver Lake bought Avaya for $8.2B in 2007, loading $6.2B in debt onto a telecom equipment company in structural decline. Cloud communications (Zoom, Teams, RingCentral) was eating the legacy business. Filed Chapter 11 in 2017, emerged with reduced debt. Filed AGAIN in 2023 — the exact same problem, just a slightly smaller debt load and an even more disrupted industry. Two bankruptcies, $8.2B in value destroyed. TPG and Silver Lake learned nothing from the first bankruptcy.

Advent merged Serta and Simmons — two PE-owned mattress companies — into one larger PE-owned mattress company with even more debt. Casper, Purple, and Tuft & Needle disrupted the traditional mattress industry with DTC models. Serta Simmons couldn't invest in marketing or product development under $2B+ in debt. Filed Chapter 11 in January 2023. The mattress industry is the ultimate PE graveyard: Simmons went bankrupt twice before, and now the merged entity went bankrupt again. Some industries just cannot support PE-level leverage.

Leonard Green invested in Prospect Medical and extracted $400M in dividends in 2019 — more than the entire equity investment. The hospital chain then deteriorated rapidly: equipment not maintained, staff not paid on time, patients transferred out. Multiple hospitals closed or are closing. Congressional investigation found Leonard Green 'enriched itself at the expense of patient care.' The playbook: invest, extract, walk away. Let patients and communities absorb the loss. Healthcare PE at its most destructive.

TPG led a consortium to buy Cirque du Soleil for $1.5B in 2015. Loaded the live entertainment company with debt. When COVID shut down all live performances in March 2020, Cirque had zero revenue and massive debt service. Filed Chapter 11, laying off 3,480 employees (95% of workforce) — with $0 in severance. TPG lost its equity. Catalyst Capital and new investors bought the company for pennies. The founder's legacy — 36 years of building the world's most iconic circus — destroyed by five years of PE leverage. Revenue-dependent businesses and high leverage don't mix. COVID was the trigger, but the debt was the bullet.

While not a traditional PE buyout, Rite Aid's collapse illustrates the PE-adjacent destruction pattern. Decades of debt-fueled acquisitions (Brooks/Eckerd in 2007 for $3.4B), failed mergers (Walgreens deal collapsed in 2017), and PE-style financial engineering left the company with $8.6B in liabilities. Opioid litigation ($10B+ in claims) was the final blow. Filed Chapter 11 in October 2023, closing 500+ stores. 50,000+ jobs at risk. PE didn't own Rite Aid — but PE's financial playbook (acquire, lever, extract, repeat) ran it into the ground.