It was majority employee-owned before the acquisition but is now majority owned by private equity firm. The main change I’m noticing is that everyone is being pressured to work uncompensated overtime (we’re all on salary here) and requests for training/professional development have been all but eliminated. They also initially hired a bunch of new employees with no specific work in mind and expected us to find the new people work to do then got rid of a lot of people about 1 year afterwards.
Has anyone else rode out a private equity buyout? It’s not terrible, but it is extra stress on top of an already stressful job. Is it a good idea to get out now? I’ve heard they typically sell after around 5 years of “optimization”. What happens then?
A lot of people already said it… sorry for all the doom and gloom.
If you can, gtfo and if you have stock get rid of it. What you see is just the beginning. Next stage all the most competent employees will jump ship, and will not be replaced. Leaving not only fewer employees to do the same work, it also leaves the ones without the skills and knowledge.
It will get sour fast, and whoever is in charge is there for the private equity to maximize their ROI. So no use talking to management or HR.
The strategy is to strip the company to the bones. Anything that can be sold will be sold (Buildings, furniture, IP). And if the company needs it to operate it will be leased back at a monthly rate. All cash this generates is pulled from the company to the PE firm. If they can they will saddle the company with a debt for the purchase of itself, so they can have the company not only pay that back, but with interest (a leveraged buyout). Some of these assets sold off can easily go to other subsidiaries of the same PE firm… such as real estate. Assuring their long term profitability.
Add in “cry to any reporter that will listen that your business is ‘failing’” and you have the Eddie Lampert (Sears/Kmart) strategy.