So does private equity own everything?

If you like hard-hitting, long-winded, comedic investigations into incredibly boring financial topics led by the baby-faced assassin of the newsroom Dan Toomey, boy are you gonna love this video.

Thanks to the following folks for their generous help with this investigation: Gretchen Morgenson, Senior financial reporter, NBC News Investigations; Jeff Hooke, Senior finance lecturer at Johns Hopkins and former broad-based finance and investment executive; Will Flanary, ophthalmologist and comedian better known as Dr. Glaucomflecken; and Paul Kiernan, Wall Street Journal reporter covering finance and regulation.

Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global Management, The Carlyle Group, and TPG either declined or didn’t respond to our request for an interview. The American Investment Council, a leading lobbying and research organization for the private equity industry, also declined to participate.

Video by Dan Toomey and Henry Stockwell

What does private equity actually do?

00:00—01:18: Intro
01:18—03:05: Defining private equity
03:05—05:04: Private equity's huge footprint
05:04—06:23: How buyouts work
06:23—10:27: What happens to the bought out
10:27—13:14: How did PE get so big?
13:14—14:34: PE executives are rich af
14:34—16:33: But what about the returns?
16:33—17:57: Breaking news
17:57—19:21: Existential crisis
19:21—19:59: Stuffing their privates

[josem]

why the fuck am I learning about economics while stoned, thank you Dan

[Met_Ethio]

The guy awkwardly peeking near the Blackstone sign adds that much more hilarity to an already incredible video. Dan you're killing it.

[jimmyjimmy]

Watching this series slowly get more and more serious is brilliant.

[Neptoid]

Hospitals owned by private equity having 10% higher mortality because they cut costs and don't prioritize lives, was a hard pill to swallow

[ophiedrowning]

wait why the fuck do private equity schemes sound exactly like the mob’s racketeering???

[GoodWorkMB]

Some of you may have noticed we spelled Will Flanary's name wrong. Some of you may also notice that he has more subscribers than us. So many of you will notice we won't do anything.

[JanusIIV]

What a great channel. The reseach, the aesthetic, the delivery, the live-on-the-street vibe with people's reactions, some of the small fly-by jokes like the spin, genuinely fantastic.

[GoodWorkMB]

We have now fully investigated private equity. If some international authority doesn't kidnap us now, what should we cover next?

[failedrevolutionary]

When I was in high school I stumbled upon this industry almost by accident when I wrote a paper about how Private Equity is currently strangling local journalism out of existence. If you're wondering why the local paper that used to have a wide circulation in your area is now just five people running an instagram account, the answer is Condé Nast

[JoshuaArnold-icjg]

Housing crisis, health crisis, financial crisis, cost of living crisis, debt crisis, inflation crisis, Middle East crisis. How many crises can we endure? As I approach retirement with a solid financial cushion, I'm anxious about a potential banking crisis. Is private equity a good option to grow my money securely?

[RuRichelieu]

I did consulting for PE and I can tell you these firms do close to zero technology due diligence when making an investment. They are oftentimes making large investments in tech and have no technical people on staff. After seeing how the sausage is made it’s terrifying how much money they have and how so much of it is pension funds.

[lizp]

private equity is the reason i haven't gotten a merit increase nor cost of living adjustment at my job despite single handedly saving the company $350k USD per year after some optimization work I did.

[amirakassem-yqlq]

The “Will Flannery: ophthalmologist, comedian. Dan Toomey: struggling journalist, struggling comedian.” got me 😂😂😂

[continin]

Blackstone does own things you’d never expect. They purchased Center for Autism and Related Disorders, or CARD, which is the worlds largest autism clinic. After purchasing the company in 2018 they bloated the company, trying to get as many centers/clinics, and profits, as possible. But after covid happened and both staff and clients dried up, they had to close over 100 centers, pulling out of 10 states completely. They went bankrupt this year, and the company was bought back by the founder. (This isn’t exactly a great thing, the founder sold it for a few hundred million, and bought it back for 48.5 million. Also the founder Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh has appeared on the antivax “documentary” Vaxxed which pushes the vaccines cause autism conspiracy, and she has also lead anti union efforts in CARD.) I realize this is a tiny part of the Blackstone story, but id love if this story could have any news coverage.

[evathegrand]

I love that I could show my dad this video and he would think it’s a serious financial news channel.

[calebmoss]

I learned more about finance from this video than i did from my finance degree.

[brettc]

"it's kind of capitalism on steroids"
"that was my nickname in college"

Lmfao! This channel needs to blow up. This is the best way to get news stories.

[Dasilver-ht]

Thank you so much for this video but in these uncertain times it is more important than ever to have a solid understanding of how the government are still in charge of our wealth and manage your finances, invest wisely and navigate economic downturns. But my primary concern is how to grow my reserve of $240k which has been sitting duck since forever with zero to no gains, sure I'm all in on the long term game, but with my savings are lying waste to inflation and my portfolio losing gains everyday, I need a remedy.

[alanthefisher]

Absolutely insanely packed with info. Fantastic video guys

[LundyCynical]

To say I laughed watching this... my first finance job was a research analyst for a boutique capital raising firm. Our clients covered two main areas, Private Credit, and Private Equity. What were my first three projects into PE based on? Local Government Pension Schemes (Later I would also do DB pension funds), Charities & Endowments, and Family Offices (SFOs, MFOs, WMs). The amount of money that flows around in PE is insane. We were often raising for funds in the hundreds of millions of $... there were less than 10 of us in the office. Some of those funds were seeing 20%+ returns year on year. If you make even 5% as commission for fund raising as a team (average success fee), you're set for life, and raising those funds are not tricky at all.
On a different note, would be great to see a video on my other love, Private Credit / Debt. Some really interesting aspects to it as it stands post 2009 in the US, and some interesting new players around NYC. Defo seeing a massive increase in investment there as well with current interest rates (see that as you will).