[Zhang Fei]

[Bascially, the land under the Red Lobster restaurants became valuable enough to buy the chain and charge the restaurants enough in rent to basically bankrupt them and then sell the land to developers.
Although their businesses also may have contributed to that, but apparently the primary cause was that a hedge fund saw enough value in the land to eliminate the restaurants on top.]

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Unclear they did much more than almost break even. The $1.6b from real estate sales was less than the $2.1b paid for the company. Meanwhile, a Vanguard index fund was providing an average 5% & up return without any of the angst of private equity.

[Jonty30]

According to this article, they basically sold the debt from other companies to Red Lobster before selling the land.

So they used Red Lobster as a loss leader for themselves and saved other properties by doing that.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91129776/what-really-killed-red-lobster-bankruptcy-private-equity

[Jonty30]

Basically, it’s like they bought two houses and remortgaged one house to pay off the first house and then let the bank have the second house back.

That kind of thing, but with businesses.