Simon Johnson comments on a recent book by Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt.  He notes that only the very big funds can use debt to skew returns for insiders primarily because only they can raise the capital needed to buy well-established companies that are rich in fixed assets, and thus in potential collateral. Smaller private-equity funds typically buy into younger, smaller companies without such fixed assets, and the leverage in those deals is commensurately less.

Regulators have recently woken up to the incentives for excessive leverage in this sector – and to the risks that such leverage poses to lenders and the broader economy. Not surprisingly, big private-equity firms seem determined to ignore or otherwise circumvent new restrictions. As the policy debate on this issue heats up, one hopes that all participants will become better informed by reading Private Equity At Work.