The Money is Getting Weird
Private equity firms can't sell the companies they own, so they're selling them to themselves. If you work in retail, e-commerce, or DTC, this is the canary in your coal mine, and it's singing.
*This article was originally published on rebeccaraebarton.com
I’m not an economist. I’m a marketer who’s spent two decades watching what happens to brands when the money gets weird.
👀 And the money is getting weird.
The New York Times published an article on Christmas Eve that I certainly missed, and you may have too.
The article discusses a trend in Private Equity firms selling companies to themselves through “continuation funds” — because they can’t find actual buyers.
It was just last spring I was meeting with a PE firm and one member of the team was telling me “some companies we really believe in and really want to hold on to.”
Even then, I remember thinking what was being sold to me as ‘faith in a business’ smelt more like ‘something isn’t working like we thought it would.’
Turns out the whole industry is having that moment.
Private Equity is sitting on ~31,000 unsold companies.
Worth $3.7 trillion.
The industry calls it “creating liquidity.”
I’d call it what I’ve seen a hundred DTC brands do with their CAC numbers: creative accounting that delays the inevitable.
Here’s why this should matter to anyone in marketing or e-commerce:
Private equity owns an astonishing amount of retail and we’ve all witnessed a pretty remarkable failure rate. Party City. Joann. Claire’s. Red Lobster. Forever 21. Food52. Saks. Just to name a few.
In 2024, PE-backed companies accounted for 65% of billion-dollar bankruptcies — and 70% in Q1 2025. These aren’t random failures. They’re the result of a playbook: load companies with debt, extract fees, and hope you can sell before the music stops.
The music is stopping.
If you work with retail brands, e-commerce companies, or any business that touches consumer discretionary spending, you’re about to see what happens when paper valuations meet reality.
We’ve been here before. It rhymes with 2008. And I’ve got thoughts.
You can check out the article here.
