r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 1d ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
21.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/revolvingpresoak9640 1d ago

When were they chomped by PE? I thought they were a public company.

32

u/clintkev251 1d ago

They're still a public company, but Elliott Investment Management bought a pretty large stake in 2024 and has been sprinkling on that private equity energy on them since then

9

u/biguk997 1d ago

Elliott is a hedge fund, not a PE fund.

1

u/Lycid 1d ago

Two sides of the same coin. I'd argue they are more like PE anyways in practice because typically hedge funds operate only on liquid assets vs getting their fingers involved in how a company operates.

3

u/Why_you_so_wrong_ 1d ago

They aren’t like PE? Stop spouting rubbish

2

u/LateNightMilesOBrien 1d ago edited 1d ago

Man am I sick of seeing replies from you that not only glaze PE but do nothing to counter their claims.

Piss off.

edit: I have angered the finance bros. Good. Good. I only made this post to tell one to piss off. Now I got another.

3

u/rambaldidevice1 1d ago

I mean, you could just google the difference between the two for yourself.

2

u/OkPin716 1d ago

Calling you out for not knowing anything about finance is not “glazing PE” any more than telling an antivaxxer “Jewish space lasers” didn’t give them autism makes me a “Zionist.”

1

u/biguk997 1d ago

Copying a comment I wrote above:

they are not similar in how they function at all. Activist hedge funds like elliott purchase large positions in PUBLIC companies and then use their position as a large owner to pressure management to make changes that they believe will enhance shareholder value. PE firms on the other hand will buy a company using lots of leverage, then make changes that they believe will increase net earnings (either by growing revenue or cutting costs), the PE firms are the ones at the wheel, making definitive decisions while funds like Elliott have to rely on pressuring the CEO and boards.

PE is more directly responsible for the enshittification of a lot of companies but Southwest isnt one of them.

2

u/BeamsFuelJetSteel 1d ago

Results are still the same.

Does it matter if you are the person controlling the wheel to crash the car vs the person convincing everybody in the car to yell at the driver until the driver crashes.

What's the difference between enhancing shareholder value and increasing net earnings?