[mapt]

This is a private transaction, for the profit of the banks providing the money to perform the buyout.

The banks are betting that the company/brand, once stripped of any valuable assets and being stretched to painful profitability at the cost of its reputation, will last long enough, with enough assets left at bankruptcy, that their high-interest, high-priority debt will be more than repaid.

If the private equity buys a firm in a leveraged buyout, sells off all its assets in a week, and shuts down immediately, it's the banks that get stiffed; The banks aren't idiots.

If you for some reason prioritize long-term survival & good/service provision of the ailing business, you need to take a bite out of the banks funding private equity takeovers that hit chapter 11 ("reorganization bankruptcy") or deprioritize their debt in chapter 7 ("liquidation bankruptcy") to disincentivize them providing funds.

There are certain shenanigans with private equity related to valuation and compensation ("My company is worth $1000, so I'm awarding myself 50% shares as part of a tax exempt retirement plan") that should be not just outlawed, but which should cause the IRS to send a CPA to go back and slap them in the face with a wet trout for having the fucking gall.

The cycle of enshittification that private equity often participates in, is less a problem with the fact of private equity, and more a problem with the giant piles of money in the finance industry growing much larger and taller than the economy they are theoretically structurally resting on. A problem with financialization and wealth inequality itself, with the system designed for upwards wealth redistribution, trying to transfer the last 10% of the world's money (which the poor are using as their medium of exchange) into the same dragon's hoard that has the rest.