I remember the hysteria about vulture capitalism. Even vultures play a valuable role in their ecosystem. Companies don't sell themselves to a private equity shop because they are thriving and healthy. If they were more valuable in parts than their sum, it says something about the company.
Can't say much about the hypothetical wealth stealing since it's completely hypothetical.
"It says something about the company" might be a moral salve in your eyes, but you have not established that they provide value to anybody but themselves. Specifically: how does pilfering pension funds, and then declaring bankruptcy provide "value" in any meaningful sense? It provides greater wealth to the already filthy-rich and destroys the considerable investment that life-long workers have earned, sending those who would be retiring comfortably into poverty -- which then taxes the public support systems. A huge negative for hundreds or thousands of people, for what? A marginal increase in wealth for the already wealthy. Where's the value?
>pilfering pension funds, and then declaring bankruptcy
That's a bit of a straw man there.
The classic target for these corporate raiders is a business whose capital (real estate, equipment, IP etc.) is worth more than the total market cap of the business itself (which, for most established businesses is a proxy for profit).
In this way, the typical corporate raider buys up a business who is using a valuable asset inefficiently, sells their capital to other businesses who can make more productive use of it, and line their pockets with the value differential they created.
In the process, they'll generally fuck over a whole lot of workers, but there is real economic value (not necessarily social good) in this process of capital redistribution.
> In the process, they'll generally fuck over a whole lot of workers
The only way they can do that, since the workers' pensions were an obligation of the company that got broken up, is to declare that company bankrupt and void the obligation. But bankruptcy is not supposed to be a way to make money by voiding a company's obligations and then selling off its capital. The net value of the company is its assets minus its obligations; the process of cashing out the company should involve paying the obligations, not voiding them.
> there is real economic value (not necessarily social good) in this process of capital redistribution
Now who is using a straw man? Again, the "economic value" in a company is its assets minus its obligations. Cashing in on the assets while voiding the obligations is not creating "real economic value". It's stealing it from the people to whom the obligations were owed.
No, it's absolutely not a straw man. The destroyed pensions are theft, which must appear on the balance sheet when you claim that vulture capitalism creates value. The loss of pension has direct impact on those owed: they are being deprived of money that they earned by providing value.
I repeat: nobody was arguing that people losing their pensions was a good thing. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Literally no-one.
I don't even know what you're referencing, or how it's even possible for Private Equity to pilfer workers' pension funds. If anything, it's the funds themselves that own/invest in Private Equity.
Yet still, you and the other poster have brought it up as if stealing pension funds (how?) is somehow "what Private Equity does".
You might as well be arguing that Private Equity destroys value because it's immoral to fuck a dog. I'm sure Carl Icahn-esque character has tried it before.
Can't say much about the hypothetical wealth stealing since it's completely hypothetical.