That belies that fact that the play is usually to finance a bunch of debt to prop it up, pay themselves PHAT bonuses, and then let it burn to the ground. Honestly, it's gotten way past tiring that the government continues to let this same scenario play out over and over and over again.

Well, they have to make money somehow. You can't just buy a failing business, run it into the ground completely, and take the blame without being compensated.

If these businesses had a promising future, the owners would have been less interested in selling, someone interested in actually operating the business would have made an offer, or it could have been publicly traded.

Eh, PE also takes over businesses where the owners just want to cash out. Plenty of businesses too small to IPO but plenty of revenue to sell to PE.