Partners Group

Mister Car Wash

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

Going private at $7/share — 63% decline from IPO price

Epicor Software

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

Active — CD&R is the current bag-holder at peak-era price

Simmons Mattress

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.

Bankrupt TWICE (2009 and 2023). Debt went from $164M to $1.9B.

Intelsat

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

Bankrupt May 2020. Silver Lake marked investment down 90% (-21% annualized return).

Merlin Entertainments

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.

4+ financial owners in 8 years. Each pass added debt.

National Veterinary Associates (NVA)

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.

FTC enforcement action. IPO abandoned. Debt load unsustainable. JAB stuck at peak-era multiple.

Sunlight Financial

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.

Bankrupt October 2023. Securities fraud class actions pending. Shareholders wiped out.

J.Crew

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.

Emerged from bankruptcy 2020. Third PE cycle underway. Fraction of former scale.

iHeartMedia

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.

Public post-bankruptcy. Revenue declining as podcasts and streaming eat radio. Stock down 85% from 2019 re-listing.

Cano Health

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.

Bankrupt February 2024. CVS takeover collapsed. $2.3B in liabilities. Shareholders wiped out.

PetSmart / Chewy

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.

BC Partners used PetSmart-owned Chewy to IPO at $8.8B (2019). PetSmart debt remained. PetSmart itself still private and stressed.

Prospect Medical Holdings

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.

State and federal investigations. Hospitals closing. Leonard Green extracted $400M dividend while patients suffered.