[kokken]

It is not analogous because if you sell your house and the sale money is not enough to cover your mortgage you are still on the hook for what's left of the principal. A leveraged buyout is exclusively on the purchased company's books, so if the company goes to zero the PE parent company is not on the hook for a single penny.

[sokoloff]

That varies by state. Twelve states are fully non-recourse states (lenders can’t go after borrowers beyond the loan security); in other states they may be able to, but borrowers who default on their mortgage may not be particularly asset-rich targets in the first place.

If the company wasn’t able to borrow money for itself, a wrapper company could which would still have very closely the same effect as being an asset-poor borrower.

[DanielHB]

What I don't understand is how the cost of banks repossessing these companies in case of default don't make the math unviable. Unless the company have a lot of fairly stable semi-liquid assets (like real estate) banks should be charging fairly high interest on these loans which would make most of these business unprofitable.

Which would increase the rate of defaults (if they are authorized in the first place) and in turn increase interest even further. I guess the PE is always maxxing out the leverage on every deal at _just_ the projected break-even point for loan repayment? But that leaves no room for error or changing market conditions which also increase the rate of defaults and so on.

[Ekaros]

Non-bank entities being in play is likely part of the problem. If you can sell the bad debt to some other entity say a fund that got investment from pension you win. For fund managers these things can look great on paper and that is everything that matters. Even if things do not workout they can on paper extend and pretend or take payment-in-kind. Meaning well you are short on interest payments so you just tack it on the principal.

And everyone gets their management fees until people start asking their money back...

[DanielHB]

Ah so it is related to that whole private debt markets, the loans these PE companies take are not with banks. It is related to that whole thing with Trump opening those kind of loan investments to ordinary americans and pension funds.

Great another financial crisis.

[Ekaros]

Most fun thing is that even if bank can't led to these sort of companies they can lend to companies that lend to them... So added fun. And well this has been going on for long time and cracks have started properly showing up more recently.

[floatrock]

> Unless the company have a lot of fairly stable semi-liquid assets (like real estate)...

That's exactly what happened famously with Red Lobster. PE sold off all the underlying real-estate to get the initial sugar-high and replaced it with a leasebacks. Those leases had escalating costs and fixed terms, which made it difficult to adapt to changing trends, and was a big contributor in what ultimately sunk it all.

[dapperdrake]

Does "the bank" know that it is unviable?

[DanielHB]

Check the other comment, apparently these loans don't come from banks, but rather from private debt markets. And most likely they don't know these loans aren't viable.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Yes, it's using bankruptcy and limited liability to extract value from companies that may well be completely solvent and functional with little/no downside or risk to PE.

Pure parasitism.

[thisisidiotic]

bingo

[1qaboutecs]

Yes, this is the crucial distinction. (I wish that articles criticizing PE were framed in terms of LBOs + bankruptcy-law instead, because that's the root of the policy problem.) Corporations can go bankrupt without risk to the human beings who are owners/investors in the corporation.

Note that from the lender's perspective, the risk is the same and in a perfect-information universe could be mitigated by charging higher interest. The problem for society is the externality that the business's services get worse.

[energy123]

> so if the company goes to zero the PE parent company is not on the hook for a single penny.

Sounds like a problem for whoever is providing the financing. Not really my concern unless you're saying there's some systemic problem it causes like with mortgage securitization during 2007. The lender will charge a high interest rate if what you're saying is true.

[brookst]

It’s the shareholders of the purchased company that provide the financing, in the form of debt in the company’s books. Then they exit, and the company lays off people to service the debt, and you and I as taxpayers cover unemployment and other social harms.

It’s literally a way to extract revenue from our broader social institutions by spreading the pain across so many people that individuals don’t complain (or, in some cases, don’t even understand how it harms them).

[ebiester]

It's the concern for the community who pays in higher prices, and the employees in their job stability.

Has everyone forgotten the social contract? We do not exist as communities to make a small number of people richer. If the trade doesn't work for all involved, we change the rules.

[trollbridge]

Not necessarily. In non-recourse states like California, the lender is stuck if the asset becomes worth less than the loan.

[Rp8yXmdmr]

11 USA states have Non-Recourse mortgages where you also are "not on the hook for a single penny."

[bombcar]

Some of those are for purchase and not refinance, but the reality is in almost all states (even those that are not single-action by statute, where single-action is "they can go after you, or the house, but not both") are practically single-action.

In fact, they'd much rather single-action foreclose as they'll likely get a house than force you into bankruptcy where they might not even get that.