Leverage buyouts tended to be the last ditch of a management of a company thats stock performance was poor enough to make the company assets worth more than the total stocks. This is exactly what went on during the first one I was involved. The management leveraged the company and took it private to keep it from a hostile takeover. While I did manage to keep my job during that one, from the employee standpoint, the outcome would have been close to the same. The current management closed and sold all non performing locations and a number that did perform to get their share of the money for the buyout. If the hostile takeover had actually happened, the profitable units would have been sold off, but probably still kept open by the new owners.

The old Danny DeVito film "Other Peoples Money" actually had a good explanation of this whole process.