Buyouts reported that Declaration Partners founder and anchor limited partner David Rubestein sold a stake in the family office/private equity underwriter (PEU). Rubenstein's family wealth arose from his co-founding The Carlyle Group.
The story suggested Rubenstein needed to cash in his Declaration holdings to fund his buyout of the Baltimore Orioles. It also drew a distinction between Declaration Partners and Declaration Capital, something not noted by Crunchbase. It reminded me of Carlyle's distancing from the carcass of Carlyle Capital Corporation, a rigor mortis canary for the Fall 2008 financial crisis.
Buyouts was not sure if StubHub equity was included in the secondary. The firm announced today its postponement of its IPO. Yesterday StubHub announced layoffs and a move from Utah to Atlanta, Georgia.
Utah offices opened in 2017 to great fanfare when the company was owned by Ebay. Rubenstein et al bought StubHub in early 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
StubHub's Utah office closing will result in the loss of hundreds of jobs. A recent Glassdoor review revealed:
Not enough focus on product quality; some teams seem unbothered by shipping frustrating experiences.
• A poorly maintained development environment that yields nearly 2-minute wait times for incremental builds of the frontend.
• An incomprehensible performance review system that occurs “periodically,” with no accompanying compensation adjustments, no peer feedback, and no formal process for providing feedback to one’s manager.
• While discussion and debate among engineers are encouraged, senior management is sensitive to dissenting opinions. Some leaders view their positions as above discussion.
• Itchy trigger finger: you’ll meet a lot of people if you join because you’ll be losing teammates to termination, resignation, and reorganization on a regular basis. By the end of my time at the company, I saw my entire team dispatched within a year. I’ve been through reorganizations before, but I’ve never seen an entire team turnover in 12 months.
Consider adopting a performance review model that enables employees to provide feedback about their managers. This would promote a more balanced and transparent evaluation process, ensuring that management is also held accountable and can improve based on constructive feedback.
Now that's a PEU like work experience, no voice, no raises, bad systems/technology.
Rest assured David will walk away from StubHub. The question is how much richer will he be for it?
Update 7-13-24: Bloomberg ran a story on the crazy things the PEU boys are doing to push cash back to investors in a low to no flip environment. And it all generates fees!
