2024-05-09
46 分钟The employee ownership movement is growing, and one of its biggest champions is also a private equity heavyweight. Is this meaningful change, or just window dressing?
So, Pete, over the past few years we've produced a handful of episodes on the show looking at the rise of private equity, which has been really astonishing.
And the results haven't always been pretty for consumers, employees and so on.
Do you find yourself having to explain or apologize for your industry often?
Or maybe you don't hang out with people who dislike the idea?
I hang out with plenty of people who who don't love private equity.
Pete Stabros is co head of global private equity at KKR, which was founded nearly 50 years ago as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
The firm was immortalized in the 1989 book Barbarians at the gate about their leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.
Just to be clear, KKR were the barbarians.
But today the firm is a mainstream corporate citizen and the world's second largest private equity firm after Blackstone, KKR has more than 250 firms in its investment portfolio, ranging across nearly every industry you can name.
Those firms employ nearly a million people.
As I mentioned to Pete Stavros, we have already made a few episodes about private equity.
There was a two part series about how PE firms are taking over the pet care industry.
One was called should you trust private equity to take care of your dog?
The other was do you know who owns your vet?
We made another broader episode more recently called are private equity firms plundering the us economy?
These episodes cover a lot of the mechanics of what private equity is, who it tends to help, who it tends to hurt.
You can listen to them before todays episode if you want, but its not necessary.
As you can tell just from the titles of those episodes, some people still think of private equity firms as barbarians who have papered over their ruthlessness with a corporate sheen.
One common criticism has to do with what happens when they buy or sell a company.
When they buy, the top executives at the target company usually get a big payout, but most employees dont.