Ze are the barbarians of Wall Street. The vultures of capitalism. Financial scum. Buy-out funds – private equity – could do no good for decades.
With borrowed money they bought the shares of companies that did not continuously sail close to the wind and also invested in the long term. They were then stripped and the best parts were sold immediately. The rest was rigorously reorganized. A new buyer had to be found within three to a maximum of five years. It made a lot of money.
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Peter de Waard is a journalist and columnist from de Volkskrant, specialized in financial and economic topics. Columnists have the freedom to express their opinions and do not have to adhere to journalistic rules for objectivity. Read our guidelines here.
After American barbarians attacked Unilever and AkzoNobel in 2017, the House of Representatives urgently met to protect Dutch heritage. The multinationals were even surprised by so much solidarity from the far left to the far right. They may be Jut’s head. They are ‘our head of Jut’, parliamentarians shouted.
But the Netherlands seems to have been converted, just as the apostle Paul embraced Christianity on the way to Damascus or Jesse Klaver became an advocate of higher defense spending after the invasion of Ukraine. Sugar dreams at the gate, could be a paraphrase on the Hollywood classic Barbarians at the Gatein which ruthless risk investors tore the legendary American multinational RJR Nabisco to pieces for their own gain.
Last weekend, the American Gordon Brothers was the savior of the Blokker retail chain that has been in trouble for years – with four hundred stores, the icon of the Dutch shopping streets. Gordon Brothers is prepared to give Blokker loans again. And thanks to Gordon’s know-how, the household goods chain would be profitable again within three years. It is understandable that Blokker’s management responded enthusiastically, but retail gurus also welcomed the move.
KKR – the barbarian who besieged RJR Nabisco – is now also a savior. This newspaper reported on Tuesday that KKR was nurturing book publisher Simon & Schuster. When a merger between this American book giant and competitor Penguin Books failed in 2022, KKR bought the publishing house for 1.5 billion. But the doomsday predictions that were made at the time about major cutbacks would not have come true. No editors have been fired and there has even been expansion. In December, the bicycle manufacturer Accell (Batavus, Sparta), affected by the Babboe scandal, attracted KKR with fanfare and fanfare.
But KKR is not a philanthropic institution, as the Netherlands knows. In the 1900s, KKR dismantled retail giant Vendex-KBB, of which few businesses survived. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a vulture with pigeon feathers. Gordon Brothers is also anything but philanthropist. The buyout fund only lends against stock collateral. And if the stock falls, the loans also have to be repaid. It is unknown what interest Blokker will have to pay on the loans from Gordon Brothers, but that will be a percentage of possibly double figures.
If things unexpectedly go wrong with Blokker, the stock will be liquidated. Gordon Brothers happens to specialize in company liquidations, so it also knows everything about the value of entire bankrupt store assets. Gordon previously liquidated V&D and its successor Hudson’s Bay.
Over time, when the vultures shed their pigeon feathers, their true form becomes visible.
