The private equity label is a rebranding to escape a tarnished reputation.

Evidence

This description of the private equity (PE) industry in Succession may be crude, but it is not inaccurate. The violence suggested by this metaphor is well earned: private equity is an extractive financial technique that leaves behind it many bankruptcies, layoffs, and unpaid bills. Its reputation was so tarnished by exploitative behavior in the 1980s and 1990s that it was rebranded from “leveraged buyout firms” to the more opaque term used today, private equity. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ongoing project of tracing how finance shapes narrative texts - the Succession reference is a first concrete instance.