Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

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)