“When I see a venture capital company take a company like Walgreens private I can’t help but wonder if Walgreens will be raped and pillaged, stores will be closed, real estate will get sold off, and the profits will be squeezed out and eventually the entire thing will be gone.”
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That’s absurd. Why would the VC buy it then? Even if they did, Walgreens doesn’t supply a service or product that one can’t easily get somewhere else.
Have you read up on Sears and Red Lobster, both were taken over by Venture Capitalists, both were raped and pillaged.
In Red Lobsters case, the venture capitalists figured out the real estate was more valuable than the restaurant chain, the closed it all down, sold off the real estate and reaped huge profits. This is one common way Venture Capitalists rape and pillage a company, they sell of the assets to pay themselves huge bonuses and leave the company broke and bankrupt.
Often venture capitalist use the assets of the company to borrow against in order to take the company over, initiate extreme cost cutting measures pump and dump the stock, reap the profits and leave company loaded up with debts and bankrupt.
Not all Venture Capitalists engage in this type of behavior but a lot of them do, and I would not be surprised if Walgreens becomes a passing memory in a couple of years with the remaining assets sold off to a competitor.