How to Avoid Private Equity-Owned Businesses

Private equity doesn't put its name on the label. When a buyout firm takes over a brand, the logo stays. The founder's story stays on the About page. Often the founder stays on as CEO. What changes is who your money goes to, and what that new owner needs from the business.

And the deals keep getting bigger. In August 2026, Electronic Arts, the company behind Madden, EA Sports FC and The Sims, closed a $55 billion take-private led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund alongside private equity firm Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. It's the largest leveraged buyout in history, financed in part with $20 billion in debt.

That's the core of the private equity model: buy a company largely with borrowed money, make the company carry that debt, then cut costs and raise prices fast enough to sell at a profit in a few years. Sometimes the business survives. Often customers, workers and quality pay for it.

The track record is hard to ignore. According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, private equity was involved in 54% of the largest U.S. bankruptcies of 2025 (companies with $1 billion or more in liabilities), even though PE accounts for roughly 7% of the U.S. economy. Among consumer discretionary companies, the stores and brands people actually shop, PE-backed companies made up more than 71%. Joann, At Home and Claire's were among the PE-backed companies that filed.

You can't stop the deals. You can stop funding them. Here's how.

1. Know where private equity hides

Private equity likes steady, fragmented industries: lots of small, owner-run businesses that can be bought one at a time and "rolled up" into a chain, often without a name change customers would notice.

Veterinary care is the clearest example. A decade ago, corporations owned about 10% of U.S. vet practices. Today it's an estimated 30% to 50%, and roughly 75% in specialty and emergency care, according to PBS NewsHour. Many of those corporate owners are backed by private equity. The same roll-up playbook has spread through dental and dermatology offices, HVAC and plumbing companies, car washes, daycares and funeral homes.

Red flags worth checking:

• The fine print. Scroll to the footer or the About page. Phrases like "a [Name] company," "part of the [Name] family" or "a member of [Name] Partners" usually point to a parent company.
• "Partnership" language. PE deals are rarely announced as a sale. Look for "strategic investment," "growth partner" or "the next chapter." When Advent International agreed to take a majority stake in body-care brand Salt & Stone in March 2026, the founder stayed on as CEO. Nothing on the bottle changed.
• A new "network" or "family of practices." If your local vet, dentist or plumber suddenly joins one, ask who owns the network.
• The investor's own website. PE firms list their holdings on public "portfolio" pages. Searching "[brand] acquired" or "[brand] private equity" often turns up the press release in seconds.
• Just ask. For local services, ask at the front desk: "Is this practice independently owned?" Independent owners are usually glad to say so.

2. Look it up with Who Owns It? (free)

Doing that detective work for every purchase isn't realistic. That's why we built Who Owns It?, MoneyMouth's free ownership lookup.

Type in any brand and Who Owns It? researches who's behind it, then shows you:

• The ownership chain, from the brand up to its ultimate owner, with each link labeled by type: private equity firm, public corporation, conglomerate, cooperative, worker-owned and more
• A clear verdict on whether the brand meets our independence criteria
• A confidence score and a plain-English research summary, so you can see how solid the finding is

Two things make it especially useful for avoiding PE. First, the research specifically looks for ownership changes in roughly the last two years, so a recent buyout doesn't hide behind an old "family-owned" reputation. Second, private equity is a hard no in our criteria. That includes minority stakes of around 20% or more that come with board seats or control rights, because that's how PE firms steer the companies they invest in.

If a brand turns out to be PE- or corporate-owned, tap Find an Ethical Switch and we'll pull independent alternatives from our directory. You don't need an account to search.

Look up a brand now →

3. Shop the MoneyMouth Directory (also free)

The easiest way to avoid PE-owned businesses is to start with ones that have already been checked. The MoneyMouth Directory lists more than 800 independent businesses across 14 categories, from food and clothing to beauty, home goods, finance and software. Every listing is vetted against our ownership criteria, and private equity ownership disqualifies a business.

Search by product, or filter by what matters to you, including:

• Worker-Owned and Cooperative
• Black-Owned, Women-Owned, Latino-Owned, AAPI-Owned, Indigenous-Owned, Veteran-Owned and LGBTQIA+ Owned
• Union-Made, Fair Trade and B-Corp Certified

Ownership changes, so we re-audit listings for new acquisitions. When a business stops qualifying, it comes out of the directory, and members who saved it to My Switchboard get a notification instead of a silent disappearance.

Browse the directory →

4. Choose ownership structures built to stay independent

Some ways of owning a business make a private equity buyout hard or impossible. When you have the choice, favor these:

• Cooperatives. Co-ops are owned by their members, whether that's customers (like outdoor retailer REI) or workers. An outside fund can't simply buy one out from under its members.
• Credit unions. Swapping a big bank for a credit union moves your deposits to an institution owned by its members.
• Employee-owned companies. When employees own the business, the people a cost-cutting buyout would squeeze are the owners. King Arthur Baking has been 100% employee-owned since 2004.
• Steward-owned companies. In 2022, Patagonia's founder transferred the company to a purpose trust and a climate nonprofit, set up so the company can't be sold or taken public.

One caution: a B Corp badge isn't an ownership guarantee. B Corp certification grades a company's social and environmental practices. It doesn't tell you who owns the company, and some certified B Corps are owned by multinationals. Check ownership separately.

And when a brand you love does get bought, take that as your cue to switch. Your loyalty was to the people who built it.

Start with one brand

You won't avoid private equity 100% of the time, and you don't have to. Pick one thing you buy every week. Look it up. If a buyout firm owns it, find an independent switch. Then do the next one.

Every dollar you move goes to people who answer for what they sell, instead of a fund racing toward its exit.

Find out who owns your favorite brands →

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Sources: Private Equity Stakeholder Project, "Private equity behind majority of 2025's largest bankruptcies" (Feb. 24, 2026) · TheWrap, "Electronic Arts Goes Private as $55 Billion Buyout Closes" (Aug. 4, 2026) · Retail Dive, Advent International acquires majority stake in Salt & Stone (March 2026) · PBS NewsHour, "As veterinary costs climb, private equity ownership of clinics draws scrutiny" (July 1, 2026) · King Arthur Baking, Employee Ownership · The Boston Globe, "Billionaire no more: Patagonia founder gives away the company" (Sept. 14, 2022)