PESP expertise featured in coverage of private equity buyout of Electronic Arts
October 1, 2025
Recent Fundfire coverage of the proposed private equity buyout of Electronic Arts (EA) features PESP’s expertise.
This week, it was reported that EA would be acquired by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and two private equity firms, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. The deal, which would be the largest-ever leveraged buyout, is valued at around $55 billion, with $20 billion in financing from JP Morgan.
Leveraged buyouts are a critical driver of economic instability at private equity-owned companies, saddling private equity-owned companies with substantial debt and often draining resources that could otherwise be invested in innovation, workforce development, or adapting to market changes. Instead, firms under private equity ownership must channel much of their revenue toward servicing this debt, leaving them vulnerable to financial distress and bankruptcy.
PESP Senior Communications Coordinator Sam Garin provided comment to Fundfire on concerns surrounding the proposed buyout:
While the equity level for this deal is significantly higher than recent mega-buyout deals, such as Sycamore Partners’ acquisition of Walgreens earlier this year, $20 billion of debt is still a lot for any company to manage, said Sam Garin, a senior communications coordinator with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit advocacy group that monitors the private equity industry.”That’s a huge number,” she said. “We’ve seen so many portfolio companies just kind of crumble under the weight that’s being placed upon them by private equity firms.”
Last fiscal year, Electronic Arts reported a bit under $7.5 billion in total revenue, less than half of the debt the company plans to take on, according to a recent press release. The company employs 14,500 people, and Garin said her group also has concerns about the impact of the take-private deal on EA’s workforce.
“What we see a lot of when private equity acquisitions go through is just intensifying pressure to produce more and more and more profits,” she said. “Layoffs are very common after private equity acquisitions.”
Silver Lake, one of the firms associated with the buyout, has come under scrutiny in the past for its connection to the controversial “Cop City” development in Atlanta.
