McIntosh Group purchased by PE firm

In my work life I've worked for three companies that were sold to private equity and they seem to all follow the same playbook, 1) replace the top management with their own, 2) suck the cash out of the business and replace it with debt and 3) lots of outsourcing and employee terminations.

Having said that, if Highlander is in fact funding the acquisition with their own money and not borrowing to do so, this may actually benefit McIntosh as they expand.  If that's the case, it wouldn't surprise me that, after the expansion is well underway that Highlander sells their interest to "cash out".

If they are smart at Highlander (and they probably are), they realize that they've snagged a jewel of a specialized company with a great future and won't gut McIntosh for short-term gain.

One of the three companies I worked for that was bought out by PE went bankrupt a few years earlier and was bought in bankruptcy by one investment company, who sold their interest to another a few years later, etc.  The guy who I worked with had 25+ years with the company and his retirement was all in company stock, which evaporated as a result of the bankruptcy.  He wasn't quite old enough to retire.  When the next set of investment firms bought the company, they outsourced most of IT and offered to "rebadge" him to the outsource firm, reducing his annual salary by $12k, reducing his vacation benefit by two weeks, increasing his contribution for health insurance, etc.  As you can imagine, he said "no thanks" to those "generous" offers and quit suddenly.

I sure hope that McIntosh had a 401k with a decent match and that the line employees participated, in case my story (above) will apply to them.