BAD COMPANY

Communities suffer when profiteers prevail.

Greenwell’s debut does important work, scrutinizing a poorly understood sector of the economy that makes life more precarious for many Americans. Private equity firms own hundreds of hospitals and newspapers, supermarket chains, countless smaller companies, and “the rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums.” Yet the industry—as exemplified by Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney—has remained willfully “opaque,” spending tens of millions of dollars to elect lawmakers who protect its bountiful tax breaks and enable its ruthless profit-making maneuvers. Greenwell began her research after private equity bought and enfeebled her then-employer, sports website Deadspin. Spotlighting four people whose lives were adversely affected by private equity—a doctor, a retail worker, a journalist, and an affordable housing advocate—she carefully demonstrates the human cost of an industry playbook that prizes cutting workers, slashing services, and raising prices. The financial risk is small for private equity firms, which rely on money from investors—frequently, municipal pension funds and university endowments—and loans that they’re “not legally responsible for” because they’ve been taken out in the name of the company being purchased. As a result, vital hospitals and popular stores close or are driven into bankruptcy, and many people lose jobs. The retail worker Greenwell profiles was such a committed employee that she got a tattoo of the company’s mascot, but when private equity cut her job along with many others, she had to fight for even a sliver of the pay she was owed. While showing how private equity has recently shifted its emphasis from retail to “recession-proof” industries like health care, Greenwell also finds reason for hope in her subjects’ nascent activism. One of her subjects helped address a private equity–created health care shortage by helping found a new hospital.

An effective, humane look at financial practices hobbling venerable institutions.