[dopylitty]

I looked into this "ClearChoice" company and unsurprisingly it's private equity owned through a chain of sketchy intermediaries.

If you're having any sort of medical or other work done make sure the company is not PE owned or affiliated. The best way to check that I've found is to look for press releases.

In this case there's a press release from 2020[0] about "The Aspen Group" acquiring ClearChoice. The Aspen Group then is owned by PE firms[1] and is already being sued in multiple states for deceptive practices that hurt patients.

0: https://www.teamtag.com/newsroom/Aspen-Dental-Management-to-...

1: https://pestakeholder.org/news/pe-owned-aspen-dental-faces-y...

[belter]

Is there a case where a private equity organization has been proven not to be shady? Would love some examples.

"Warren Buffett: Private Equity Firms Are Typically Very Dishonest" - https://youtu.be/r3_41Whvr1I

[dopylitty]

There might be one case somewhere that could be found where a firm that technically counts as PE isn't shady but in general the very idea of private equity is shady so it follows that all the PE firms would be shady also.

The point of PE isn't to run sustainable businesses that provide quality products and services for customers while treating their employees well. The point is to rapidly suck all the value out of businesses by loading them up with debt, breaking laws, mistreating customers, and exploiting employees. What happens to the carcass of the business or to the customers and employees whose lives have been destroyed doesn't matter to them.

[Aloisius]

While I have no particular love of private equity firms, Buffett didn't actually say that in that video.

The closest thing he said was that he had seen a number of proposals from private equity funds where the returns were not calculated in a way he would consider honest.

[everybodyknows]

Another red flag, even in a solo office, is overt advertising.