[nradov]

Ban companies from owning other companies? How would that work exactly?

Private equity is a convenient whipping boy for ignorant, low-information HN users who don't understand the basics of how finance works. You can certainly find examples of destructive or unethical behavior if you dig deep enough. What you don't see in the news are all the cases where PE saved companies that would have otherwise gone bankrupt.

[codingdave]

> ignorant, low-information HN users who don't understand the basics of how finance works

I though HN was a site that welcomed people of all levels of knowledge and shared thoughts, ideas, and resources to help people learn so we can elevate each other. Why are you coming at someone who freely admitted they lack understanding and tossing out a dismissive reply to them instead of saying: "Let me help fill in the knowledge gap here."

[nradov]

I thought HN was a site where users would take 30 seconds to do a modicum of research before wasting everyone's time trying to score points with a lazy, low-effort comment.

[SilverElfin]

> Private equity is a convenient whipping boy for ignorant, low-information HN users who don't understand the basics of how finance works. You can certainly find examples of destructive or unethical behavior if you dig deep enough. What you don't see in the news are all the cases where PE saved companies that would have otherwise gone bankrupt.

This is an unnecessarily aggressive comment and not appropriate.

But also, your own comment is information-free. Why don’t you share actual examples and we can determine if those are significant enough to erase the anecdotal evidence from the other side. Virtually all examples of PE I’ve seen are extractive. They don’t result in a better product. They are instead just lazy arbitrage relying on the power of capital, vendor lock-in, switching costs, and the limited capital of their abused customers.

As for “how would that work exactly” - like anything else. We can come up with ways to classify companies as private equity and enact enormous taxes on them. Or pass other types of regulations into law.

[ericd]

Sure, people mostly call out private equity when you see a group trying to cobble together local monopoly power over some necessity of life just to extract more from everyone, or trying to financially optimize something by that was never financial before. There are of course many more benign examples that no one pays attention to. But the fact remains that there are PE firms doing massively harmful things to extract wealth.

[SpicyLemonZest]

When laypeople criticize private equity, what they almost always mean to refer to are leveraged buyouts. I suspect you’d acknowledge that, if a private equity firm sees a strategy to turn around a business operationally but doesn’t produce enough returns to service their debt, they won’t pursue it even though the original owner likely would have.

[lokar]

the PE business model depends on a lot of discretionary financial regulation.

For example, banks are given pretty generous capital rule treatment when they loan money to PE firms to increase leverage. We could stop that. They also get a lot of tax preferences that increase returns to investors and managers.

[wizzwizz4]

You, presumably, have examples of these cases. Could you show them to us, please? (Given your understanding of the evidence available to us "ignorant, low-information HN users", you know you're making a bold claim, which creates a corresponding burden of proof.)

[groundzeros2015]

Example: almost every housing development.

[p_j_w]

Did you read TFA? There are some great examples there for the health care sector, and not just one off sensational examples.

[wizzwizz4]

TFA provides examples where private equity has been destructive in the healthcare sector:

> A 2024 Review of Financial Studies paper <https://www.nber.org/papers/w28474> found that private equity acquisition of nursing homes was associated with an ~10% increase in deaths, implying approximately 22,500 additional deaths over the twelve-year sample period.

I was asking for examples where private equity has made things better.

[p_j_w]

Sorry, I must have misread what you said.

[wizzwizz4]

That you did is valuable criticism of my writing. When you get deep enough into "no, you're wrong", "no, you're wrong", it becomes virtually impossible to keep track of who's saying what, unless people actually state their claims explicitly… which I didn't.

[p_j_w]

To be honest, I should have gotten it from context clues! I had read the whole thread.

[toomuchtodo]

The rules are arbitrary, the rules can be changed at any time. Finance is simply a construct on top of lower level primitives (primarily the legal framework around property ownership and corporate entity law). Totally fine for folks to ask which rules matter, which don't, and which can be changed and how long it will take. Be curious!

If the President can sign EOs banning private equity/institutional ownership of homes [1], OP's ask does not seem to be that out there imho; again, all of these rules are arbitrary and can change at any time. How do we change rules around ownership? We change laws or how they're applied.

[1] Congressional housing deal faces new hurdle as Trump pushes investor ban - https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/13/housing-deal-faces-... - February 13th, 2026

> What you don't see in the news are all the cases where PE saved companies that would have otherwise gone bankrupt.

Please provide citations of companies worth saving were saved by PE. I will start with the only one I know: Barnes & Noble.

[calcifer]

> You can certainly find examples of destructive or unethical behavior if you dig deep enough

Dig deep enough? Please. Merely tilt your head slightly upwards, and let your eyes feast on countless examples.

[WarmWash]

The problem here is that only bad/negative/failed cases make it to discussion.

It's like researching the safety of driving by only looking at local news station websites. It will seem like the only thing those cars do is crash and kill people.

[terminalshort]

And yet you didn't give one