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Private equity firms are quietly buying up a literal toxic asset: companies’ liabilities for decades of asbestos poisoning. Some Wall Street firms are scoring huge payouts to take on the hassle and financial risks of people getting sick and dying from asbestos exposure
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To get rid of their asbestos liabilities, industrial manufacturers create a subsidiary company onto which they offload their asbestos-related assets. The manufacturer will also add a large pool of cash to their subsidiary, ranging from hundreds of millions to even billions of dollars. A private equity company will then acquire the subsidiary company and its asbestos liabilities, making them responsible for any asbestos claims.
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After taking over a manufacturer’s asbestos liability, private equity investors aim to gradually resolve each claim through “litigation, settlement or by successfully resisting it,
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all the while working to spend less than the pool of money received from the manufacturer. That and high investment returns allow private equity firms to turn a hefty profit. The longer companies can hold onto the cash, the more interest it can accumulate in the market.
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view these transactions “as financial instruments, as they may provide a stable cash flow and reliable yield with potentially less market risk than equities or real estate,
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Though scientists knew about the material’s harmful qualities as early as the 1920s, asbestos litigation didn’t gain traction until the 1960s. In 1970, Congress classified asbestos as a hazardous air pollutant, and soon after, most industries began tapering off the use of the substance. Still, it wasn’t until this year that the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency followed in the footsteps of more than fifty other countries and prohibited the ongoing use of asbestos. Meanwhile, asbestos exposure is now linked to more than forty thousand deaths nationwide every year, and even more people bear the cost of serious asbestos exposure annually.
✏️ The super slow process of dealing with things that benefit industries but harm people. 🔗 View Highlight
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Starting in the 2000s, subsidiaries owned by Berkshire Hathaway — a multinational conglomerate led by billionaire investor Warren Buffett — began buying up billions of dollars worth of asbestos liabilities. “The entire operation was driven by the target numbers,” a former claims executive from a Berkshire subsidiary said under oath as part of a lawsuit over the company’s activities. He said he was told by higher-ups to “find a way to avoid paying [asbestos claims].” As the firm bought up subsidiary companies, they also bought up some of the insurers covering the liabilities, in a complicated scheme that let them squeeze out even more profit from the unfolding catastrophe.
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The strategy, one attorney told Greenblatt, is “delay, deny until [victims] die.”
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the controversial Texas two-step scheme, an increasingly popular legal maneuver in which the subsidiaries created to offload asbestos-related or other industrial liabilities subsequently file for bankruptcy, trapping victims’ legal claims in bankruptcy court.
✏️ Offload your liability, have it go bankrupt, and trap victims and their claims in endless courts. 🔗 View Highlight
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As Wall Street buys up corporate liability for these toxic chemicals and environmental hazards, it will likely apply the same playbook it’s used for asbestos: demand big payouts upfront from industrial manufacturers and then delay or deny payments to victims. Along the way, the people caught in the middle are being harmed twice, Shepard said: first by the toxins themselves, and then by private equity firms.
✏️ This is happening in more industries, like black-lung, and PFAS (forever chemicals). 🔗 View Highlight