So what happened to Colt and Remington over the years?

[Rockrivr1]

You can't be serious. PEs don't buy a company expecting to lose money on it. They buy them to grow them, fix them and flip them for proift. It doesn't always happen of course. But no PE says 'lets by this company because it is crap and we can lose money on it too!'

Some of them do buy failing companies to break them up, sell the pieces and making bank in the process.