Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)

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KKR Private equity buyout firms have set up a business model that allows many of them to buy companies, load those firms up with debt, and then pay themselves massive and often secret fees with that borrowed money. If the companies go bankrupt, investors like public funds might not get paid. Worse yet, these predatory practices harm the economy and make it harder for the governments we represent to stay solvent over the long term.

Apparently some private equity companies don't mind looting a community to make a quick buck and then walking away to search for the next opportunity somewhere else. But we don't get to operate that way, and we have no desire to -- our job is to make sure that our communities are prosperous next year, next decade, and the decade after that.



The most pernicious fallout, though, is for workers. When private equity-owned companies go bankrupt, it's usually to lay off workers and get out of their own obligations. Hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their employment at private equity-owned companies in the retail sector in the last few years alone. These job losses tear families and neighborhoods apart.