Would you want your parents to live in a nursing home owned by private equity? MarketWatch 2/25/2021 MARK HULBERT Popular Searches It’s a question a growing number of us are facing. Over the last two decades, nearly 2,000 nursing homes have been acquired by private-equity firms. And we know that those firms face enormous pressures to quickly and substantially extract profits from the companies they acquire. Might that be affecting the quality of the care provided by their nursing homes? The question is also important from an investment point of view. Investors are increasingly drawn to the spectacular returns that private equity promises, especially at a time when the future returns of public equity seem modest. But if private-equity firms are cutting corners in pursuit of their higher profits, they might face substantial legal risks that could eliminate some or all of their higher profits.