On this special episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast, we’re talking about private equity with my guest Megan Greenwell.
Megan is a journalist who has written or edited for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, WIRED, and ESPN. She is also the deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, a workshop and college access initiative for students from low-income backgrounds. A California native, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their pug. Her new book is Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream.
We begin this conversation with Megan discussing the impact of private equity on her own life, drawing from her experience with working at a company that was acquired by a private equity firm and then her subsequent research into private equity’s practices.
We explore how private equity firms often prioritize short-term profits over long-term business health, using debt financing to acquire companies while extracting management fees and selling off assets. Through specific examples like Joann and Toys R Us, Megan explains how private equity acquisitions can lead to financial distress and bankruptcy, ultimately harming not just the companies and their workers but entire communities, as detailed in her book, Bad Company.
If you want the real story behind the ultimate fate of Joann, this is the episode for you!
To see our accompanying article, with a graph, about the history and downfall of Joann, please go here.
