No, they just come in and offer a lot of money to the current owners. Bending spoons are ruthless businesspeople but AFAIK they do offer a reasonable price for the businesses they acquire.

(I used to work for WeTransfer and some time after I left it got acquired at about the price it was once considering IPO-ing at. This was apparently such a good offer that it took very little deliberation to agree to the deal.)

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lumost 8 hours ago | parent [-]

but where does the money come from? it seems like a good way to avoid regulatory scrutiny if your acquisition goal is to simply exit a competitor from the market.

	▲	rcxdude 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The money comes from investors. Private Equity basically works by taking money from investors to buy companies and turn a profit with them, paying back the investors when they do so (it's a very illiquid and risky investment, so the advertised returns tend to be higher, but it does seem like a lot of firms are struggling to actually make it work).
	▲	hedgehog 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Basically a loan.