Feedback On Our Private Equity Feature

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09/28/2006 -02:00 AM

I think we struck a chord with our August-issue report on how private-equity is changing the magazine industry. I’ve gotten a bunch of correspondence on the package, including at least a couple of letters to the editor that we published in September. And I’ve received a bunch of more incidental comments as well, including one that pointed out that a deal we described as an early home run was better described as a bloop single.

But positive or negative, it seems to me that the piece found an audience at all levels: Among the rank and file, which suffers the anxiety of M&A, and the layoffs when they occur, among the bankers who transact the deals, and among the CEOs who execute them. And there is no question the market is Hot.

And speaking of those CEOs, a thought occurred to me that I left out of the editors note for that August issue: When you as an executive sign up to work with private equity -- such as Bob Krakoff at VNU or Paul Mackler at Cygnus -- the CEO, even as the high-profile frontman, even as someone who gets wealthy if things go right, remains an employee, serving at the pleasure of the PE firm.