private equity

private equity (countable and uncountable, plural private equities)

1. Capital stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public.
2. An investment fund that specializes in buying companies in order to restructure and then sell them with a profit.

   Synonym: PE

   • 2021 August 4, Jasper Jolly, “Spain’s La Liga agrees €2.7bn deal with private equity firm CVC”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Spain’s La Liga has agreed a €2.7bn (£2.3bn) deal with CVC that could see private equity involved in the running of a large European football league for the first time.

   • 2022 February 15, Nina Lakhani, “Private equity’s dirty dozen: the 12 US firms funding dirty energy projects”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     American private equity tycoons are profiteering from the global climate crisis by investing in fossil fuels that are driving greenhouse gas emissions, a new investigation reveals.

   • 2022 July 7, “Private equity may be heading for a fall”, in The Economist‎^[3], →ISSN:

     This was driven by a scramble for yield among pension funds, insurance companies and endowments during a decade of historically low interest rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. Many have more than doubled their allocations to private equity.

   • 2024 March 18, Marc Hogan, “Same Old Song: Private Equity Is Destroying Our Music Ecosystem”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

     Private equity — the industry responsible for bankrupting companies, slashing jobs and raising the mortality rates at the nursing homes it acquires — is making money by gobbling up the rights for old hits and pumping them back into our present.