Private Equity Playbook

How private equity is reshaping our everyday lives. From your coffee shop to your hobby shop, healthcare to your kitchen counter, it’s the same playbook, every time. 

The Private Equity Playbook is a special series from the Art of Citizenry podcast. In each episode, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra and long-time collaborator Anna Canning, investigate private equity in another corner of everyday life, digging into where it’s headed and what that means for us. Tune in —

This isn't just a finance story; it’s a story about power. Private equity firms move billions of dollars behind closed doors in deals buried within corporate structures. It’s changing the way our society works, with consequences that ripple into and strain our communities. Manpreet and Anna follow the money to make sense of what happens when private equity enters the equation by breaking down the financial tricks and naming who is profiting from the destruction and human rights abuses that seem to follow every private equity deal. 

Rather than treating corporate bankruptcies, layoffs, store closures, or shrinking benefits as isolated business stories, this series asks a bigger question: What if these outcomes are not exceptions, but part of the playbook? 

But this series isn’t all doom and gloom. Along the way, Manpreet and Anna also delve into the tactics that working people, tenants, and others impacted by private equity are using to hold the powerful accountable and tease out some of the strangely funny details that are buried in the many (many) court cases (and rabbit holes) that accompany these deals.

Private Equity is Everywhere

Private equity firms are behind the demise of some of the biggest brands - and bankruptcies - of our era. From Joann Fabrics to Forever 21, the playbook doesn’t change. Here’s how it works: A private equity firm buys a well-known brand. It cuts the labor, expertise, and quality that the business was built on. Then, using various accounting tricks, it slashes costs and transfers every bit of value onto the private equity firm’s books.

This series delves into just how these private equity bosses mine a company for cash and walk away making money, even if the company doesn’t survive. What gets left behind is the wreckage: layoffs, store closures, canceled worker stock, pensions quietly footing the bill, and the rest of us absorbing the fallout.

This series is not about a few brands or changing consumer tastes. It’s about identifying a pattern of extraction. At its sharpest edges, it sheds light on uncomfortable truths surrounding garment supply chains, unlawful immigrant detention, worker exploitation, and global human rights issues. However uncomfortable, Art of Citizenry finds it essential to discuss because while we cannot opt out and consumer choices cannot fix it, we can make sure it doesn't happen in the dark.