Private equity (PE) funds are said to invest capital and management expertise in businesses closely tied to everyday life in an effort to revive them, but a new book by Brendan Ballou criticizes their activities from the perspective of “plunder.”
A book has attracted attention for highlighting how PE funds bring capital and management expertise not only to American companies but also to sectors such as housing, healthcare, eldercare, education, prisons and public services, creating mechanisms for extracting wealth. The book presents a critique of the PE fund turnaround model and examines its impact on industries closely tied to everyday life.
The author, Brendan Ballou, is an American lawyer who served as a special counsel responsible for PE funds while working as a federal prosecutor. The original title is PLUNDER, and the book is said to expose the industry’s underhanded practices by stripping away the PE fund façade.
The book argues that PE funds can become plunderers that devour patients’ assets beneath the outward guise of being capitalism’s expert physicians. It points to the possibility that PE funds’ turnaround support, through intervention in medical practices, can lead to rising patient debt and excessive extraction of assets.
The book explains how deeply PE funds have penetrated healthcare, housing, public services and other sectors, as well as the structure underlying that expansion, and is intended to present an understanding of the industry’s actual conditions, including overseas examples.