Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity atWork provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model.
“Private Equity atWork is the first comprehensive examination of private equity—its history, economic performance, and social consequences, especially for employees.The authors cast a gimlet eye on private equity’s business model, whose shortcomings are dissected with razor-sharp analysis. The material is timely and original. It includes detailed case studies as well as proposals to better regulate this invisible but omnipresent industry.
—SANFORD M. JACOBY, Distinguished Professor, UCLA
“In this brilliant new book, EileenAppelbaum and Rosemary Batt pull back the curtain on the shadowy world of private equity and its role in the management and mismanagement of our economy.Their rigorous, balanced, and well-written study shows how inadequate government regulation, biases in the tax code, and a permissive Wall Street culture combine to put private equity financiers in charge of important American companies, often to the detriment of the long-term interests of workers, investors and the broader economy. Appelbaum and Batt develop a program of common sense policy changes that will help us tap the socially productive potential of private equity while trimming its worst excesses.This terrific book will be of interest to policymakers, students, and scholars, and should be read anyone wanting to understand why America’s widely shared prosperity got derailed and how to get it back on track.”
—GERALD EPSTEIN, professor of economics and codirector, Political Economy Research
Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst