It was a bit surreal hearing Walter Isaacson implicitly defend private equity underwriters (PEU) in his PBS interview with author Gretchen Morgenson. A friend steered me to the interview and Isaacson's potential conflict of interest.
SEC filings show five entities covering PWP Growth Equity I and PWP Growth Equity II. These findings may or may not explain Isaacson's line of questioning. However, they do indicate Isaacson has a conflict of interest via his role with Perella Weinberg and that was not declared for the viewing audience.
It's just another indicator that we live in a PEU world.
Update 5-29-23: The PEU lobby came out hard against the book. The greed and leverage boys know to cherry pick numbers, a charge they leveled against the author.
Update 12-16-24: Walter spoke on the Trump-Musk bromance on CNBC and endorsed widespread conflicts of interest. PEUs eroded the conflict of interest space. Trump, Musk and the TechGods blew them to smithereens. Elon Musk will do what he did to Twitter, crappify it and lose investors big money. Walter you might want to check out Glassdoor. Musk's ex-Twitter (X) has:
37% would recommend to a friend
Prior to Elon: Only bad experiences tended to be if you found an unlikely toxic manager, in that case, HR will not help you out of it. They will always side with management, despite the evidence. With Elon: No Severance, Cut off benefits mid Medical Procedures, did not honor any of what was promised to employees
Glassdoor reviews reveal Elon does not have the skills to manage an organization. He may be an outstanding roving technical problem solver but that is not leadership.
