Review by Booklist Review
Journalist Greenwell wrote for the digital sports magazine Deadspin when Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm, took over. Private equity firms invest in companies that are not publicly traded, like hospitals and nursing homes, increase their value, and then sell them at a profit. In Greenwell's experience, the investors eliminated popular content and micromanaged employees instead of focusing on business operations. Within five years, Deadspin went from a popular site with a readership of 20 million to a rarely used pass-through website for gambling. Afterwards, Great Hill was lauded for their performance by investors, even though Deadspin was defunct. Greenwell's experience led her to dig into private equity and how it impacts American workers. She interviewed several people, among them a newspaper journalist and Toys R Us employee, both of whom lost their livelihoods and health insurance while equity firms made billions. Greenwell also exposes how these leaders hold Senate seats, influence legislation, and impact local economies. She helps readers understand this perplexing topic by sharing relatable stories. This book will appeal to those who are interested in business, economics and finance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Greenwell debuts with a scathing indictment of private equity. Profiling individuals whose lives were upended by such firms, she recounts how private equity's takeover of Toys "R" Us in 2005 led to staffing cuts that forced one Oregon floor supervisor to take on responsibilities previously covered by three employees until the company went bankrupt in 2017 and refused to pay her severance. Examining private equity's disastrous forays into the real estate industry, Greenwell details how one tenant's efforts to force the firm that owned the Virginia apartment complex she lived in to fix the building's mold and rodent problems resulted in her family's eviction under a dubious pretense. Such stories outrage, but Greenwell finds reason for hope in ordinary people pushing back against private equity's worst abuses, describing, for instance, how a Wyoming physician frustrated by Apollo Global Management's winnowing of vital services at his hospital opened his own medical care facility to serve rural clientele with few alternative options. Greenwell also provides sound suggestions for reining in private equity, proposing legislation "requiring firms to stick with a company in order to make a profit instead of selling off its assets and shutting it down." The result is a stark reminder of the human toll of corporate penny pinching. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Neon Literary. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
