So buy the debris for pennies on the dollar.

So it was the white racist in the south and in the end, as usual, Trump's fault?

I had worked for a thriving media company that exploded with growth, thanks to a small group of people (led by me and one of the VP's) that leveraged business interest in interactive media (early 1990s).

Then we were bought by a small private equity firm. Our company was bankrupt in one year, and locks and chains were put on the doors and guards were posted at all the exits to keep people from walking out with anything except the shirts on their backs.

The VP called our small tech team the night before and told us what was going to happen, though we had smelled it coming weeks ahead of time. We drove over and pulled all our hard drives and storage media and brought them home.

Me and a few other guys were scooped up right away by competitors offering big salaries, but 70+ other people landed on their asses.

I still remember the looks of shock on peoples' faces and all the women crying.

Isn't that how Mitt Romney made his millions before going into politics?

What PE firms do is a bit more complicated and legally legit but what they are essentially doing is acting like mobsters. So it helps to watch the mob version to get an understanding. There's a short version of it in Goodfellas when they take over the restaurant, run up it's accounts while taking all the food out the back door and off to other restaurants then burning it to the ground for insurance money.  There's longer version in The Sopranos season 2 or 3 when Tony takes over the sporting goods store.  He's got the owner over a barrel and leaves it in his (actually the schmuck's sister's) name, while he maxes out every account, steals all the merchandise and leaves the owner to declare bankruptcy.

Super crude and simplified version of the PE strategy can go like this.  Take a Company with a historic and valuable name that has brand loyalty, and with a long track record of success, like Remington for example, cut production costs by lowering QC, fire seniority employees who earn the most (But who also have the most valuable skills to the company) replace them with minimum wage employees who know nothing, axe the R&D department completely and pressure the line managers to increase production by any means necessary.  This maximizes the profit margin in the short term.  As the short term profits spike, hey wow look at that, those profits are magically exactly what the salaries and fees the PE firm costs.  There is no profit and the company has to take out loans to cover operating expenses.  Banks are generally more trusting of multi generational iconic companies like Remington so more money can be leveraged out of the banks than could be for say PSA.  Oops most of the money loaned ended up being paid to the PE firm instead of covering the actual operating costs so now the company is in the red.  About the time creditors and suppliers cut off the money because they're not getting paid back, employees start quitting for not getting paid and customers stop buying the product due to quality going to shit it's time to pull the plug.

If the PE firm stayed an outside entity they simply walk away.  If they took some level of ownership they do all of the above but shuffle the money off to another entity under the same corporate umbrella and then break off the raided entity into a stand alone separate company.  Sometimes they find a sucker to buy in and take over after the raid.  It's more complicated but they find a way to leave someone else holding the bag.  It's all about short term profit and moving on.

That is a long, unproductive read.

I agree. If PE didn't step in the employees would have lost their jobs a lot sooner. PE is very high risk and not everyone gets a silver rose in the end. Not saying this was handled the best but Remington got a second chance and it's more than they would have gotten otherwise.

Just remember Mitt Romney is a big player in this game.

Sort of the whole ethos of "Wall Street"...  Greed is Good and if we get rich and saddle the company with debt that will drown it?  Too F'ing bad!!

Colt has been in the same wringer which has left it barely hanging on and buried in "deal debt"...

Awesome.