[johnrgrace]

The private equity fund who makes the decisions about what to do is buying the company with other people's money. They get a % of the other peoples money they manage as revenue and slice of the profits on success.

Also they often engineer things so the money the fund put into the deal comes back very fast. In this case they sold the companies real estate which got a big chunk of their initial investment back ASAP.

the simplified view - red lobster they bought it for $2.1b - they sold off the real estate for $1.5b and 25% of the equity for $575m - so the PE fund has $25m of their original investment in the deal. They borrowed a bunch of money and then paid out dividends on that $25m that were multiples times that amount.