Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Private Equity Is Getting Boring

PE (doom)

A simple gloomy model you could have of private equity is:

1. Once upon a time, companies were mispriced. Lots of companies were available cheaply. Their price didn’t reflect the present value of their cash flows, or at least, it didn’t reflect the present value of the cash flows they could reasonably achieve if you added some leverage and improved their management.
2. A few ambitious risk-seeking entrepreneurs noticed this systematic mispricing and set out to fix it. They raised money from friends and family and patient investors who were willing to take risk, they bought companies at low prices, ...