This experience has given me first-hand experience of a PE takeover, and the standard line of PE guts the soul of a company and sells off everything is crap.

I don't know how many meetings I've been at where the PE team blatantly states over and over, let us help you, tell us what you want to do, tell us what you need, and we completely flub it. Sometimes our CEO is too paranoid, sometimes too prideful, sometimes too oblivious, but mostly just doesn't have the knowledge on how to run a software company.

PE is going to run out of patience soon, and it won't be good for us. There's going to be headlines of how PE gutted us, but in reality, we gutted ourselves.

I agree, mostly, but I've also seen (and been in) situations where the PE acquired a company for it's customer base and knew going in that it was going to gut the current leadership and install all new systems & processes [that would support 10x scaling]. This doesn't make PE bad or evil, but it's not accurate to state that PE overlords are always hands-off.

But what about the cases where the PE firm asset strips the company, loads it up with debt and then walks as the company implodes and everyone loses their job? That seems to be the model of some PE firms. But maybe those are the ones that mostly make the news. I would certainly hope they aren't all predatory vulture capitalists.

BTW the current state of English water companies is a not a good advert for private equity.