The Ben Stein Interview

PE Week Wire interviewed Ben Stein on his controversial NYT OpEd piece of last month:

Last month, Ben Stein wrote in The New York Times that management buyouts of public companies should be outlawed. Pretty surprising for a free-market Republican who made his bones in the Nixon White House, before becoming an economic pundit, actor, gameshow host and economic pundit (again). So surprising, in fact, that some financial bloggers wondered if it was a fit of pique that has since abated.
It hasn’t. I spoke with Stein yesterday about the article, and have posted the entire audio interview at peHUB.com. My goal was to let Stein expound on the points he made in print, but also to play a bit of Devil’s Advocate. For example, if management buyouts are such good deals for company management, how come they don’t get outbid? Aren’t there certain operational efficiencies a company can recognize as a private entity that it can’t as a public entity? Isn’t there a possibility that company management will overvalue its corporate assets (the “falling in love with your own players” problem)? Don’t shareholders have the ultimate responsibility here, since they have the final vote?