Brendan Ballou

CEO and Founder, Public Integrity Project · 1 appearance on the record.

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Brendan Ballou is a former federal prosecutor who served as Special Counsel for Private Equity at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and currently heads the Public Integrity Project. He is the author of Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America, which examines regulatory oversight of private equity.

11statements → 8claims → 7claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.55/5average certainty → 3.64/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

7 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 7 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Brendan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Ballou: Carlyle Escaped ManorCare Wrongful Death Suit Through Fund Shell Structure

“When the family of that resident sued for wrongful death, Carlisle was able to get the case against it dismissed, saying that it was not the technical owner of the nursing home chain, but rather merely advised a series of funds whose limited partners through s…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 20:54 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

100% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Brendan Ballou on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said11 Episodes1

Everything Brendan Ballou said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Ballou: Legal rules shift private equity incentives away from workers and customers

“Lawyers like me have created a series of rules and regulations that have changed the incentives for investors that often works for the private equity firms, but may not necessarily work for workers, for customers, even for other investors.”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 9:59 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: Carlyle Escaped ManorCare Wrongful Death Suit Through Fund Shell Structure

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 20:54 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: Blackstone recouped Apria Healthcare DOJ settlement costs via dividend recaps

“One of the examples that I was looking at was Blackstone's acquisition of Apria Healthcare, which ultimately had to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department because of allegedly selling medical devices that were never actually us…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 27:45 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: PE-Owned Companies Are 10x More Likely to Go Bankrupt

“That also is borne out at least in some of the sort of quantitative studies, suggesting, for instance, that private equity-owned portfolio companies are 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as non-private equity-owned peers.”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 38:47 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: Sun Capital Used Section 363 Sale to Offload Friendly's Pensions

“When Sun Capital bought Friendly's, the diner chain in the Northeast, they did a lot of the tactics that we were talking about, push the company into bankruptcy, but they were not just the largest equity owner in the company, they're also the largest lender. A…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 39:45 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Insight

Ballou: Private equity is the latest flawed 20-year financial model cycle

“We lawyers have this incredible ability to invent a flawed business model every 20 years. Right now, I would argue that it's in large part private equity. 20 years ago, it would have been subprime lenders. 40 years ago, it would have been SNLs. 60 years ago, i…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 41:20 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: PE insurance failures leave state guaranty funds holding the bag

“The challenge that we've got is if these insurance companies fail, the responsibility for paying the continuing obligations will essentially default to the state guarantee corporations in which the insurance companies are incorporated. So if you have an Iowa i…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 50:27 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: PE Firms Are Typically Insulated from Portfolio Company Liabilities

“And then the third, and this is the part that interests me the most as a lawyer, is that private equity firms Typically are able to insulate themselves from liability. So if something goes wrong at a portfolio company, the private equity firm is rarely held le…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 11:37 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Ballou: Without corporate veil reform, short-term thinking will increase

“So I think if we don't change that piercing the corporate veil issue, which it's not a question of capitalism or non-capitalism, it's really a question of in the weeds, how do we design our business system? I think we're going to have increasingly short-term t…”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 16:41 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Assertion Supported

Ballou: PE lobbying stalled and weakened surprise medical billing reform

“There's also a thousand smaller stories, for instance, lobbying around surprise medical billing, which was really crucial to some of the business models of the few private equity portfolio companies. They were successful installing legislation for a number of …”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 55:18 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Opinion

Ballou: Private equity firms have supplanted investment banks in importance

“And in some sense, they have, in my observation, sort of supplanted in importance the investment banks of a generation or two ago.”

Brendan Ballou Aug 7, 2023 ▶ 41:11 Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Sachin Khajuria and Brendan Ballou – Private Equity: Profit or Plunder? (EP.331)	Aug 7, 2023	17m

Brendan Ballou

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

How they sound: not measured why? →

Appearances (1)

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