It is not analogous because if you sell your house and the sale money is not enough to cover your mortgage you are still on the hook for what's left of the principal. A leveraged buyout is exclusively on the purchased company's books, so if the company goes to zero the PE parent company is not on the hook for a single penny.

That varies by state. Twelve states are fully non-recourse states (lenders can’t go after borrowers beyond the loan security); in other states they may be able to, but borrowers who default on their mortgage may not be particularly asset-rich targets in the first place.

If the company wasn’t able to borrow money for itself, a wrapper company could which would still have very closely the same effect as being an asset-poor borrower.

What I don't understand is how the cost of banks repossessing these companies in case of default don't make the math unviable. Unless the company have a lot of fairly stable semi-liquid assets (like real estate) banks should be charging fairly high interest on these loans which would make most of these business unprofitable.

Which would increase the rate of defaults (if they are authorized in the first place) and in turn increase interest even further. I guess the PE is always maxxing out the leverage on every deal at _just_ the projected break-even point for loan repayment? But that leaves no room for error or changing market conditions which also increase the rate of defaults and so on.

Yes, it's using bankruptcy and limited liability to extract value from companies that may well be completely solvent and functional with little/no downside or risk to PE.

Pure parasitism.

Yes, this is the crucial distinction. (I wish that articles criticizing PE were framed in terms of LBOs + bankruptcy-law instead, because that's the root of the policy problem.) Corporations can go bankrupt without risk to the human beings who are owners/investors in the corporation.

Note that from the lender's perspective, the risk is the same and in a perfect-information universe could be mitigated by charging higher interest. The problem for society is the externality that the business's services get worse.

> so if the company goes to zero the PE parent company is not on the hook for a single penny.

Sounds like a problem for whoever is providing the financing. Not really my concern unless you're saying there's some systemic problem it causes like with mortgage securitization during 2007. The lender will charge a high interest rate if what you're saying is true.

Not necessarily. In non-recourse states like California, the lender is stuck if the asset becomes worth less than the loan.

11 USA states have Non-Recourse mortgages where you also are "not on the hook for a single penny."