Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Douglas
Another trick is they buy an undervalued company and start discreetly selling off it's assets, then sell the company at a small "loss."
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Or put together a fund to buy an undervalued company, leverage its assets to pay back the fund investors and pay huge transaction fees to the fund organizers, then cut what's left of the company, its employees, and the customers it supplied loose to die on their own. A decently run manufacturing company maintains reserves in order to make equipment repairs and upgrades without going into debt. Some wise guy comes along and says, "Hey, this company has a lot of cash. Let's buy it, pocket the cash and leverage what's left. F ck the employees and the industry. We'll blame the company's failure on NAFTA or China or something." But that's capitalism.
There is an interesting case study of just how this is done. It's in a book entitled "Glass House."