So explain, in your own words, then, how you think Ares is more efficiently allocating capital now that they're in charge of GC.
Because it sure seems to me that all they are doing is squeezing their employees and vendors ever harder as per the Bain "how to run a company into the ground" handbook.
And why wouldn't you attribute it to incompetence, rather than malice?
A successful company is worth vastly more than a destroyed one, or one that has had its assets stripped.
The ideal LBO is one in which you take an undervalued company private, maximize its operations, and then spin it back out at a time when you can achieve maximum return (eg when the market is high).
If Guitar Center is such an amazing business, how did they end up in a shark's mouth to begin with? It's precisely because they were a poorly run business that they were consumed by Bain. If Bain sells pieces of the business, who does that harm exactly? If Bain maximizes profitability and spins GC back out, who does that harm? Fired employees? Well it's business, not charity, nobody is entitled to a job; most businesses exist to generate a profit, not employ people. I find that most people dislike that fact, however that's how every economy works, on profit not charity (which derives from having earned a profit in the first place).
Not to mention that even if you were right, and a company is extremely valuable and all Bain does is destroy good companies, that opens up vast opportunities for good competitors to grow and hire new employees.
Your response might be: and how about the employees of said destroyed company? Sure, and how about the employees of a million businesses that go under every year due to incompetence, we should obviously outlaw bad business operators and entrepreneurs. If you're an employee of any company, anywhere, you're assuming risk of employment, that your employer may go under, weaken, or restructure. There's no avoiding that risk.
