🏦 “Behind the Curtain”

3 Books:

Expose Machinery of Private Equity

Private Equity is one of the most powerful—and least understood—forces in the modern economy. Its influence reaches into our hospitals, housing, media, and even emergency services. But how do we make sense of a system that’s both wildly profitable for some and deeply destructive for others?

Three books offer us a triangulated view from radically different vantage points:

• The Insider’s Manual (The Private Equity Playbook by Adam Coffey)

• The Prosecutor’s Indictment (Plunder by Brendan Ballou)

• The Journalist’s Exposé (Bad Company by Megan Greenwell)

Together, they tell an interesting story…

📘 1. The Private Equity Playbook by Adam Coffey

Perspective: Operator / Insider
Tone: Strategic, enthusiastic, managerial

Coffey’s book is a crisp how-to manual for executives working within private equity-backed companies. He lays out what PE firms want, how they operate, and how CEOs can succeed under their ownership. The message? Play the game right, and everyone wins—especially the investors.

Key themes include:

• “Value”-creation strategies and exits

• Management incentives tied to growth

• Private equity as a growth engine, not a villain

Coffey sees private equity as an efficient vehicle for scaling businesses, creating wealth, and driving professional success. What’s missing is any deep reflection on social costs, inequality, or accountability.

📕 2. Plunder by Brendan Ballou

Perspective: Legal insider / Critical observer
Tone: Analytical, cautionary, reform-minded

Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, lifts the lid on the systemic risks private equity poses. His approach is structural: he shows how PE firms legally and financially insulate themselves whilst offloading risk to workers, consumers, and the public.

Key concerns include:

• Legal loopholes that shield PE firms from liability

• Collapse of services in critical sectors (e.g., healthcare, nursing homes, prisons)

• Failures of governments and regulators to step in

Where Coffey sees efficiency, Ballou sees extraction. He argues not that private equity is evil, but that it's poorly regulated, highly opaque, and deeply dangerous when applied to vital institutions.

📙 3. Bad Company by Megan Greenwell

Perspective: Journalist / Outsider
Tone: Narrative-driven, urgent, empathetic

Greenwell’s book tells the ground-level stories of people harmed by private equity ownership—employees in gutted companies, patients in mismanaged care, families evicted from neglected housing. Unlike Coffey or Ballou, she focuses less on mechanisms and more on consequences.

Key contributions:

• Real-life reporting from the frontlines of financialised business

• Spotlight on industries where private equity causes disproportionate harm

• How corporate PR and media may silence or distort the public’s view

Greenwell is not content with analysis. She wants to show readers how abstract financial decisions translate into human suffering—and how that suffering is often invisible by design.

🔍 Why Read All Three?

Each book offers a piece of a puzzle. Together, they reveal—what the system does, how it’s justified, and who pays the price.

📚 Final Take

To understand private equity not just as a financial mechanism but as a force shaping modern life, we need more than one perspective, e.g:

• Start with Coffey to learn the rules of the game.

• Read Ballou to understand who wrote those rules—and who they protect.

• And finish with Greenwell to hear from those who never got a seat at the table.

Or… read in another order.