Julian Atanassov

In private equity, we speak of “value creation plans” as though the phrase itself were self-evident. But what most of these plans describe is not creation. It is capture: extracting more from what already exists.[1] The distinction matters. Value creation produces something genuinely new and useful to society. Value capture realises profit from it. [2] When the two are confused, businesses stop innovating and start extracting and call it progress. I work in lower mid-market private equity. I...