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At the recent Labor Notes conference in Chicago, The Private Equity Stakeholder Project hosted a panel on organizing against private equity featuring researchers from PESP and workers from companies owned by private equity firms, representing the retail, manufacturing, disaster restoration, and media industries. The panel opened with a brief introduction to how private equity investments are distinct from public investments, highlighting how the burden of private equity’s cost-cutting strategy falls on workers. PESP also explained the role of pension funds in private equity: public pensions ma ..read more

The private equity firm KKR recently acquired a majority stake in Refresco, the world’s largest independent bottling company. Refresco produces beverages such as BodyArmor Sports Drink for Coca-Cola, Gatorade for Pepsi, Arizona Iced Tea, and Tropicana juices. In May, workers at the Refresco bottling plant in Wharton, New Jersey voted to join the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America union (UE) after years of union-busting by Refresco. The same week of the election, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) notified Refresco of penalties totaling over $60,000 f ..read more

Kaiser Health News published its findings on an investigation of private equity firm Nueterra Capital, which formed Noble Health, revealing it had received nearly $20 million in federal covid relief money and Medicare and Medicaid funding in the 18 months before it closed two rural hospitals it had acquired. Use of those funds are still not fully accounted for. KHN, June 15, 2022: Buy and Bust: When Private Equity Comes for Rural Hospitals See also, USA Today, June 15, 2022: A private equity firm pledged to rescue rural hospitals. After receiving millions in pandemic relief, it shuttered their ..read more

Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) Executive Director Jim Baker testified this week in front of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations. The hearing, titled “Where Have All the Houses Gone? Private Equity, Single Family Rentals, and America’s Neighborhoods,” shone a spotlight on the negative effects private equity ownership of single-family homes has on the country’s housing stock and communities of color.  These corporate landlords have consolidated single-family rentals (SFR) at record rates since the aftermath of the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Between 2011 a ..read more

Private equity firms Kelso & Co. and Juggernaut Capital Partners acquired Plan B in 2017, when “the campaign to end federal abortion rights, cresting after decades of legal challenges, would have made the purchase of the nation’s most popular emergency contraception a tantalizing option,” KHN writes.  KHN, June 7, 2022: Misinformation Clouds America’s Most Popular Emergency Contraception PESP Healthcare director Eileen O’Grady told KHN, “With customers buying up Plan B, this could be very good for their investors regardless of their level of comfort profiting off of Plan B.”  Cen ..read more

Reporting on a Pennsylvania four-hospital system’s risk of collapse, WHYY noted that PESP sent a warning letter to Attorney General Josh Shapiro asking that he “decline to approve Prospect Medical Holdings’ proposed change of ownership until Leonard Green & Partners returns the fees and dividends it collected from Prospect.” WHYY reported the deal could be “catastrophic” to Delaware County hospitals. PBS/NPR/WHYY, May 23, 2022: Crozer Health’s parent company has a long history of siphoning millions from its hospitals. Pa. officials were warned, but their hands were tied WHYY cited the May ..read more

Last year the city council of Ithaca, New York, voted to fully decarbonize by 2030, requiring grid decarbonization, electrifying transportation and rolling out heat pumps to the city’s 6,000 aging commercial and residential buildings. Utility Dive, June 2, 2022: Inside Ithaca’s plan to electrify 6,000 buildings and grow a regional green workforce using private equity funds A full retrofit of every building could cost $600 million. In order to decarbonize all of the buildings, the city aggregated blocks of buildings to manage project risk, and then securitized the project to attract private cap ..read more

On March 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rule changes that would require registrants to include certain climate-related disclosures in their registration statements and periodic reports, including information about climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, results of operations, or financial condition, and certain climate-related financial statement metrics in a note to their audited financial statements. The required information about climate-related risks also would include disclosure of a registrant’s greenhouse g ..read more

The private equity firm KKR recently acquired a majority stake in Refresco, the world’s largest independent bottling company. Refresco produces beverages such as BodyArmor Sports Drink for Coca-Cola, Gatorade for Pepsi, Arizona Iced Tea, and Tropicana juices.  Last month, workers at the Refresco bottling plant in Wharton, New Jersey voted to join the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America union (UE). KKR should ensure that Refresco honors the results of the election by working in good faith to reach a fair collective bargaining agreement. In a June 2021 election, a major ..read more