Plunder
Plunder (2023) is a book by Brendan Ballou that exposes the harm caused by private equity.
In an article published in The Atlantic on May 1, 2023, Ballou writes:
| “ | Private equity firms can succeed when their companies, customers, and employees fail. It’s a broken system. ...[C]ompanies bought by private equity firms are 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as those that aren’t.[1] | ” |
Ballou gives the example of Friendly's restaurant, which a private equity firm Sun Capital purchased in 2007, subjected it to debt, took it into bankruptcy, and then orchestrates a controversial “363 sale” in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware.
Many restaurant closures occurred under the management by Sun Capital, including 63 restaurants in October 2011, 37 ore in early 2012, and all its locations in Ohio a few years later. Ultimately it went into bankruptcy again, and Amici Partners Group as led by investors familiar with the restaurant business purchased it on January 19, 2021, promising to keep its remaining 130 locations open. As of March 16, 2023, there were only 119 Friendly's stores still open.