Keep pulling the thread on Bain & Company.
According to a Bain & Company report, private equity distributions as a percentage of net asset value have fallen to 11%, the lowest level in more than a decade.
The collapse of First Brands Group resulted in the disappearance of $2.3 billion in assets due to practices like pledging the same collateral multiple times.
A Bain & Company report predicts that capital from retail investors will be a primary driver of future growth for the private equity industry.
Many private equity-backed companies currently carry debt levels of 6 to 8 times their EBITDA, a range typically associated with junk-rated credit.
Cliff Asnes of AQR has characterized the perceived low volatility of private equity returns as an illusion created by "stale pricing" rather than true stability.
The private equity industry has a backlog of unsold portfolio companies valued at over $3.6 trillion across nearly 30,000 firms.
In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing 401(k) plan administrators to include private equity and other alternative assets like cryptocurrencies in defined contribution retirement plans.
According to Bain's 2025 Global Private Equity report, margin growth has contributed only 6% to value creation in software buyouts over the last decade.
The private equity industry's use of Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is considered misleading because it can be artificially inflated through financial engineering like subscription lines and bridge loans.
The collapse of First Brands Group has troubling parallels to the failure of Greensill Capital.
Apollo, BlackRock, and Carlyle were among the firms that lobbied for years to gain access to the 401(k) retirement market.
Mark Rowan of Apollo argued that the U.S. retirement system is overexposed to mega-cap tech stocks, stating, "We've basically leveraged the retirement system of the country to Nvidia."