Today, I’m speaking with Megan Greenwell, a former prime editor at Wired and Deadspin, about her new guide Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. It comes out on June tenth, and it’s a searing account of how non-public fairness goes far past impacting failing companies and deeply impacts and transforms the lives of on a regular basis Americans.
Decoder could be very a lot a present concerning the programs and frameworks that designate tech, coverage, and enterprise, and meaning we’ve talked about non-public fairness plenty of instances on the present. Private fairness is in all places throughout the enterprise panorama, regardless that its large affect on how so many firms function is fairly hidden from view.
But when you see it, you begin to discover it in all places, and it’s extremely validating to listen to that so many individuals have had related experiences with firms managed by non-public fairness. I do know this, as a result of it’s in our numbers and the suggestions we get right here on Decoder — our 2023 episode with lawyer and creator Brendan Ballou about his guide on non-public fairness, Plunder, is one among our hottest episodes.
Megan’s curiosity in non-public fairness got here from her expertise as editor-in-chief of Deadspin, the well-known and now-defunct sports activities and tradition web site. Deadspin was a part of Gawker, and Gawker was taken over by a non-public fairness agency known as Great Hill Partners, which started to instantly micromanage Deadspin’s content material. That was when Megan first realized that the targets and monetary outcomes of a non-public fairness agency had been very disconnected from the targets and monetary outcomes of the businesses it had taken over.
Megan’s guide is a deep dive into the non-public fairness business, as expressed in 4 elements of the financial system: retail, media, housing, and — perhaps essentially the most maddening of all of them — healthcare. My household has numerous medical doctors in it, and I’ve heard a lot about how non-public fairness has modified healthcare within the US. You’ll hear Megan join the dots between the financialization of healthcare and the poor experiences many individuals have with healthcare as we speak.
We additionally spent a while speaking concerning the historical past of personal fairness, and the throughline from the New York City actual property world that gave start to Donald Trump all the best way to the non-public fairness business of as we speak. I believe you’ll discover there’s a shocking quantity of historical past right here that actually does assist clarify not simply how the incentives of finance have come to dominate the American lifestyle, but in addition the way it’s seeped into the best ranges of the federal government. Perhaps most surprisingly, you’ll hear Megan take nice pains to distinguish non-public fairness from enterprise capital, which could be very totally different — and with very totally different issues.
I all the time actually get pleasure from speaking to different editors, particularly about one thing they’re so interested in. Let me know what you concentrate on this one. I think you should have loads to say.
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