Oakland political economy journalist/blogger Darwin BondGraham has an interesting article about a court case that appears to reveal massive collusion between private equity firms to manipulate markets and cheat investors when doing leveraged buyouts (I think thats what “LBO” stands for?) of public companies. Darwin includes some network diagrams, apparently bi-partite networks of the major firms and their shady deals extracted from Dahl v. Bain court documents unsealed by the NYT. The document is a surprisingly riveting read, kind of like techno-thriller-horror script.
Found additional news articles about this story:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/108521/private-equity-exposed-lawsuit-blows-the-lid-shady-deals#
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/e-mails-back-lawsuits-claim-that-equity-firms-colluded-on-big-deals/