Private parties are allowed to make bad business decisions: Lenders can give loans that might not pay back. Businesses can take on a lot of debt and cash out the owners if allowed under the terms of the loan. A PE buyout isn’t even necessary to do this. The owners could load the company up with debt and pay themselves a lot of money if they negotiated the right loan terms. One of the suppliers I used for a while did exactly this, enriching the owner and then collapsing.

One correction is that it’s not like paying for the company with money from the company you’re buying, because that obviously wouldn’t benefit the sellers. The money comes from a lender and they get terms to take the business if the loan terms aren’t meant. The lenders are the effective new largest owners of the company with the PE firm being a smaller owner but the expected primary operator.