Latest news with #MeganGreenwell
The Verge
3 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
How private equity kills companies and communities
Today, I'm talking with Megan Greenwell, a former top editor at Wired and Deadspin, about her new book Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. It comes out on June 10th, and it's a searing account of how private equity goes far beyond impacting failing businesses and deeply affects and transforms the lives of everyday Americans. Decoder is very much a show about the systems and frameworks that explain tech, policy, and business, and that means we've talked about private equity a number of times on the show. Private equity is everywhere across the business landscape, even though its massive influence on how so many companies operate is pretty hidden from view. But once you see it, you start to notice it everywhere, and it's incredibly validating to hear that so many people have had similar experiences with companies managed by private equity. I know this, because it's in our numbers and the feedback we get here on Decoder — our 2023 episode with lawyer and author Brendan Ballou about his book on private equity, Plunder, is one of our most popular episodes. Megan's interest in private equity came from her experience as editor-in-chief of Deadspin, the famous and now-defunct sports and culture website. Deadspin was part of Gawker, and Gawker was taken over by a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners, which began to immediately micromanage Deadspin 's content. That was when Megan first realized that the goals and financial results of a private equity firm were very disconnected from the goals and financial results of the companies it had taken over. Listen to Decoder, a show hosted by The Verge 's Nilay Patel about big ideas — and other problems. Subscribe here! Megan's book is a deep dive into the private equity industry, as expressed in four parts of the economy: retail, media, housing, and — maybe the most maddening of them all — healthcare. My family has a lot of doctors in it, and I've heard so much about how private equity has changed healthcare in the US. You'll hear Megan connect the dots between the financialization of healthcare and the poor experiences many people have with healthcare today. We also spent some time talking about the history of private equity, and the throughline from the New York City real estate world that gave birth to Donald Trump all the way to the private equity industry of today. I think you'll find there is a surprising amount of history here that really does help explain not just how the incentives of finance have come to dominate the American way of life, but also how it's seeped into the highest levels of the government. Perhaps most surprisingly, you'll hear Megan take great pains to differentiate private equity from venture capital, which is very different — and with very different problems. I always really enjoy talking to other editors, especially about something they're so curious about. Let me know what you think about this one. I suspect you will have a lot to say. If you'd like to read more on what we talked about in this episode, check out the links below:
Associated Press
22-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Book Review: Veteran journalist explores impact of private equity industry on US society
Megan Greenwell was the editor in chief of Deadspin when it was acquired in 2019 by a Boston-based private equity firm. After three months of watching her new bosses make what seemed to her to be boneheaded decisions, she quit. Two months later, the staff followed her out the door. Within five years, the once popular online sports magazine known for its irreverent reporting had been sold to an obscure Maltese website. Stunned by what she witnessed, the veteran journalist was determined to get to the bottom of a little understood, lightly regulated industry that owns hospitals, day care centers, supermarket chains, newspapers, commercial and residential real estate, and much more. The big names are Blackstone, the Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management, KKR and Cerberus Capital Management. But what, she wondered, do they actually do? The result of her inquiry is 'Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream,' a deeply reported, briskly paced and highly disturbing account of how the private equity industry has 'reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.' Instead of focusing on the macroeconomic level, she tells the story through four remarkable people whose lives were upended after private equity acquisitions. Liz was a Toys R Us floor supervisor when the storied retailer was acquired by Mitt Romney's company, Bain Capital, and other investors and eventually went under, laying off 33,000 employees without severance pay. Roger practiced medicine in rural Wyoming when private equity acquired his hospital and gutted services. Natalia was working for local Gannett newspapers at a time when the chain eliminated more than half its staff after years of private equity ownership. And Loren, an affordable housing organizer, escaped public housing only to end up in a mold- and rodent-infested apartment complex in northern Virginia owned by a private equity firm on the other side of the continent. Greenwell has written an essential guide to an industry that operates largely in the shadows, donates generously to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep it that way, and has contributed substantially to the hollowing out of the American dream. Despite her immersion in this predatory world, she remains surprisingly optimistic. 'Every year,' she writes, 'a few more people like Liz, Roger, Natalia and Loren start fighting back.' ___ AP book reviews:
