[jemmyw]

Reading this makes me change my view on PE a little. Beforehand I would have just been in the "PE is bad" camp. But if you look into how a PE company like Silver Lake works and their prior purchases, it's not asset stripping. It seems much more like taking a bet they can turn an underperforming public company into a well performing private one and cash in the difference, usually with a partner who has a plan on how to do the turnaround.

That's not to say it's good. It's just another investor tool like VC money. And it's probably also a simplification to say it's all about short term profit when they talk about being able to take companies on longer term strategies than the public market would allow for.