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A P.E. Morality Tale for the Ages

A talmudic reading of the underappreciated saga surrounding VitalCaring Group, a private equity concoction that a Delaware judge has branded a hallmark of modern duplicity.

michael douglas wall street
Competition between private equity firms has never been so intense: Over the past three decades, the number of firms competing for deals has risen exponentially—along with the trillions of dollars they collectively manage. Photo: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
William D. Cohan
January 6, 2025

Private equity has become such an astoundingly lucrative business that I guess it is no surprise that the temptation of ever greater fortune sometimes leads its practitioners astray. On December 4, the Delaware Court of Chancery’s Judge Lori Will wrote a notably damning opinion involving VitalCaring Group, which had been created by two mid-market P.E. firms—The Vistria Group, based in Chicago, and Nautic Partners, based in Providence—to buy companies in the home healthcare industry. According to the judge, Vistria and Nautic aided and abetted the “egregious breaches of the duty of loyalty” owed by three executives that the firms had poached from their former employer, Encompass Health Corporation.