This book will open your eyes to the many-tentacled beast of private equity and how it impacts your life, even if you are not an investor. The book covers some of the major companies, including Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR. It traces how, in countless takeovers, companies become commodities, useful only for how they can be chopped up, repackaged, and squeezed dry. Workers and consumers become the casualties in every industry from insurance to healthcare. Is there any potential solution for this Gordian knot of greed? Increased scrutiny and diminished returns may cool interest in private equity for now but as long as there is money to be made, private equity will continue to thrive.

This book lays out a lot of hard facts regarding the history of private equity transactions and the resulting consequences for all stakeholders. It is a grim take, and one that is tough to swallow. There is never a shred of doubt regarding the author's position on private equity companies - the book starts off with a fairly negative bias. While I agree with the argument and contents, I do believe it would have been better if the authors were to start off at-least seemingly unbiased and let the readers come to their conclusions a bit more gradually.

This is such a timely and important read! These are the plunderers is focused on the insidious rise of private equity which we learn in this book has taken over in almost every industry. The devastating impact of this is the owners of PE get incredibly rich while they devastate the businesses they buy - leaving workers, customers, policy-holders, communities and pensioners in really bad shape. The chapters on what the Apollo Group and KKR among many others (Bain and Company, Merrill Lynch, etc.) are extremely upsetting to read -- they have bought up nursing homes, emergency departments and physician practices and not only does the quality of care suffer but the fees increase for patients, Medicare and others. In the end, the government has failed us too -- the DOJ and SEC have turned blind eyes to what is happening and even former democratic President Clinton helped enable this mess. We need legislation as well as university endowment funds and large pension funds to stop investing in private equity. This book highlights why investigative journalism is so critical and needs to be supported. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC and I left this honest review voluntarily.