5 PE Successes
Often established orgs that are taken over by PE are already in trouble. RJR Nabisco, Safeway, etc.
PE does indeed often tear the org apart, finding more value in the parts than the whole. Other times it slashes costs (both mgmt and workers) and that is painful, but often succeeds in making the company more stable down the road. PE is heartless, efficient, and profitable. So people hate and fear it, it's a good boogeyman. But heartless and efficient is what capitalism needs - "creative destruction".
From what I can tell, it appears they get 20% of the revenue, not 20% of the control - although IDK if the Big12 Conference is an LLC or what? Does it have shares? IDK. Even at 20% of shares, I don't see how they will be able to overly dominate anything, that's far from a majority.
On top of that, what exactly could they do? They can't sell off assets (although maybe Baylor for $2M and a used jockstrap is a good deal) and they can't impact hiring and firing at the colleges. Mostly it seems to me like they would have a strong skill and shared interest in helping negotiate higher media deals in future, and that is likely a good thing to have around. And CVC has done this in the past for LaLiga etc.
As cykadelic says above, it all depends on the specific terms of the deal. If they were giving $1B and only taking $1 per year and no "ownership", that's a no brainer right? But if they were giving $1B and taking all the revenue forever, that's a terrible deal. Somewhere in-between there is an agreement that makes sense.
