Private equity has killed 38 companies you loved.
We track 311 more — and grade every deal on customers, workers, operational integrity, and durability. Most fail. A few succeed. The honest answer is usually complicated.
Built for firsthand PE experience.
If you worked at a company before, during, or after private equity ownership, your perspective can help others understand what actually changed.
- —What was the company like before acquisition?
- —How healthy were operations, staffing, culture, and quality?
- —What problems was PE supposed to solve?
- —What promises were made to employees, founders, or customers?
- —How was the acquisition communicated?
- —What changed during integration?
- —Were there early signals of investment or cost pressure?
- —What changed in staffing, quality, pricing, or service?
- —What got better? What got worse? What stayed the same?
- —Were promises kept?
- —How is the company doing now?
You can submit anonymously. Do not include trade secrets, privileged information, confidential documents, or anything you do not have the right to share. We prioritize patterns, public evidence, and careful labeling over sensational claims.
From stories to signals.
A single story can be noisy. A structured pattern can be powerful. DeathByPE turns firsthand reports into outcome signals that can be compared across companies, sponsors, platforms, industries, and deal types.
Step 1
Firsthand report
Employees, customers, founders, and communities submit what changed.
Step 2
Structured dimensions
Reports are tagged by customer outcome, worker outcome, founder/seller experience, community impact, operational integrity, and durable post-exit health.
Step 3
Evidence links
Signals are connected to research, acquisition records, filings, inspection data, articles, lawsuits, and company announcements.
Step 4
Signal aggregation
Reports are grouped by company, PE firm, platform, industry, geography, deal type, and time period.
Step 5
Outcome intelligence
Visitors can see what changed, how often it was reported, how strong the evidence is, and what remains disputed or uncertain.
Share what you know.
Customers, employees, and operators have firsthand information no journalist or database can capture. Add yours.
Have a source, correction, or company response? Submit it →
Useful signal aggregation, not review sludge.
DeathByPE does not treat every submission as fact. Reports are labeled by evidence quality, connected to sources where possible, and aggregated cautiously. The goal is not outrage. The goal is clarity.
Employee signals
- —Staffing changes
- —Workload or quota pressure
- —Benefits, training, safety, or autonomy changes
- —Employee upside or ownership participation
Customer signals
- —Price changes
- —Service quality changes
- —Wait times or access changes
- —Surprise fees, contract changes, or complaint patterns
Operational signals
- —Investment in systems, training, technology, or quality
- —Rollup activity or local market consolidation
- —Debt pressure, sale-leasebacks, fees, or margin targets
- —Integration quality and post-exit durability
Evidence strength
- —Number of independent reports
- —Number and quality of supporting sources
- —Whether claims are user-reported, sourced, corroborated, verified, or disputed
- —Whether company or sponsor response is available
The outcome map.
DeathByPE evaluates outcomes rather than assuming them. Deals are classified by evidence across outcome dimensions — not by ideology.
Deals where PE ownership appears to have made the company healthier — through growth investment, better operations, improved customer outcomes, or durable post-exit health.
1 verified — high bar by design →Deals where outcomes are mixed, contested, early, or materially different depending on which stakeholder you ask. The most analytically demanding category.
3 documented →Deals where PE ownership appears linked to serious harm, decline, fragility, bankruptcy, reduced quality, reduced access, or significant negative externalities.
Explore documented cases →Not enough credible information yet to classify. A fair site needs an uncertainty bucket — not everything warrants a verdict.
Add a source or report →Revival criteria: A deal must score Strong or Mixed on all four core pillars — customer outcome, worker outcome, operational integrity, and durable post-exit health — with at least three Strong scores. Financial returns to investors are not enough. Any Weak score disqualifies the deal, regardless of how positive the others are.
How we evaluate outcomes.
Every deal we document is assessed across six dimensions. Financial returns to investors are not a dimension. Full methodology →
Customer Outcome
Did quality, safety, access, pricing, reliability, or service improve or decline after the acquisition?
Worker Outcome
Did jobs, wages, staffing, benefits, safety, autonomy, training, workload, or morale improve or decline?
Founder / Seller Experience
Were promises kept? Did the buyer preserve the company's mission, employees, customers, and long-term health?
Community Impact
Did ownership changes affect local access, competition, affordability, employment, or essential services?
Operational Integrity
Was value created through better operations, technology, training, and growth — or extracted through leverage, fees, asset sales, and cuts?
Durable Post-Exit Health
Was the company still healthy years after PE exited, or was fragility pushed onto the next owner, workers, customers, or communities?
Verified information, connected to lived experience.
Research gives context. Firsthand reports reveal what it felt like inside the company. DeathByPE connects both so readers can understand not just who bought a business, but what changed and how strongly the evidence supports each claim.
Source types we connect
- —Academic studies
- —Government reports
- —FTC / DOJ materials
- —SEC filings
- —Bankruptcy filings
- —Court records
- —Inspection data
- —Press releases
- —Local journalism
- —Industry reports
- —Company responses
- —User-submitted documents
Evidence labels
- User-reported:Submitted and not independently verified.
- Firsthand:Direct experience as employee, customer, or founder.
- Sourced:Connected to at least one external document or record.
- Corroborated:Multiple independent sources or reports agree.
- Verified:Confirmed by strong primary documents or datasets.
- Disputed:Contested by a company, sponsor, or affected party.
- Needs corroboration:Plausible but thinly supported.
- Company response available:Sponsor or company has responded.
Conditions that shape outcomes.
The central question is not whether PE is good or bad. It is: under what conditions does PE create durable value, and under what conditions does it create hidden costs?
Conditions that tend to support durable value creation
- +Moderate leverage
- +Long hold periods
- +Founder or operator continuity
- +Investment in systems, technology, training, and quality
- +Broad-based employee ownership or gain-sharing
- +Strategic growth rather than cost-cutting alone
- +Transparent governance
- +Exits to responsible strategic buyers
- +Measurable customer or operational improvement
Conditions that tend to create hidden costs
- −Excessive leverage
- −Dividend recapitalizations
- −Sale-leasebacks of essential assets
- −Understaffing as the primary margin lever
- −Rollups in fragmented local markets with pricing power
- −Essential services where customers cannot easily switch
- −Opaque fees or related-party transactions
- −Short hold periods
- −Quality, safety, or access cuts
- −Post-exit fragility
What the research shows.
Peer-reviewed studies document both positive and negative post-acquisition outcomes.
PE-Owned Nursing Homes: 10% Higher Short-Term Mortality
NBER Working Paper #28474, 2021
Analysis of 18,485 nursing homes found PE ownership associated with increased mortality, reduced nursing hours, and lower compliance with Medicare care standards.
PE Buyouts and Workplace Safety: Injury Rates Fall
Review of Financial Studies, 2021
Cohn, Nestoriak & Wardlaw found a large, persistent decline in workplace injury rates following PE buyouts of publicly-traded U.S. firms. The safety improvement correlated with higher probability of IPO exit.
FTC: PE Roll-ups Reduce Competition in Health Care
Federal Trade Commission, 2024
Serial acquisitions consolidate healthcare markets while avoiding antitrust scrutiny, with documented effects on competition, pricing, and quality.
Restaurant PE Buyouts: Fewer Health Violations Post-Acquisition
Review of Financial Studies, Bernstein & Sheen, 2016
Using health inspection records from restaurant chain buyouts, the study found store-level safety and operational practices improved post-buyout — especially when PE partners had prior industry experience.
Not a complaint board.
DeathByPE does not treat every submission as fact. Reports are labeled by evidence quality, connected to sources where possible, aggregated into patterns, and evaluated cautiously. Positive outcomes, disputed accounts, company responses, corrections, and uncertainty are part of the record.
Have a source, correction, or company response? Submit it →
Better Buyout Standard.
DeathByPE is not anti-growth or anti-investment. The Better Buyout Standard highlights practices that make PE ownership more likely to create durable value.
- →Moderate leverage
- →Transparent ownership and governance
- →Investment in systems, training, technology, and quality
- →No value creation through avoidable quality degradation
- →No rollup strategy dependent mainly on reduced competition and pricing power
- →Worker impact tracked before and after acquisition
- →Customer impact tracked before and after acquisition
- →Employee participation in upside where feasible
- →Responsible exits that preserve long-term company health
Browse PE ownership by industry.
311 brands tracked across 48 industries.
About our data.
Sources
Our database is compiled from SEC filings, state business registrations, press releases, PitchBook and Crunchbase transaction data, FTC reports, peer-reviewed research, and investigative journalism. We cross-reference multiple sources before adding any entry to the database.
Corrections & Submissions
This database is updated as new acquisitions and outcomes are documented. If you have a correction, a sourced addition, or a deal to submit for review, submit it here. We verify all submissions before publishing.
Help make private equity outcomes visible.
If you work at, buy from, sold to, research, regulate, or represent a PE-backed company, your signal can help build a clearer picture of what changed after the deal.
Have a source, correction, or company response? Submit it →