The greatcare homecash grab: howprivate equityturnedvulnerableelderly peopleinto human ATMs
养老院巨额敛财黑幕：私募股权如何将弱势老人沦为“人形提款机”
On a spring morning in 1987, a 30-year-old man named Robert Kilgour pulled up beside a row of foamy cherry trees in the town of Kirkcaldy, on Scotland’s east coast, to visit an old hotel. The building was four storeys of blackened Victorian sandstone. Kilgour was a big man, a voluble Scot with a knack for storytelling. He already owned a hotel in Edinburgh but wanted to branch into property development and was planning to turn this old place, Station Court, into apartments.
1987年的一个春日清晨，30岁的罗伯特・基尔戈尔驱车停在苏格兰东海岸柯科迪镇一排繁花满枝的樱花树旁，前去考察一座老旧酒店。这栋建筑是四层楼高、墙面发黑的维多利亚时期砂岩楼。基尔戈尔身材高大，是个健谈的苏格兰人，极擅长讲故事。彼时他已在爱丁堡拥有一家酒店，却想拓展房地产业务，计划将这座名为 “车站苑” 的老楼改造成公寓。
A few months after he completed the purchase, however, the Scottish government scrapped a grant for developers that he had been counting on. He had just sunk most of his personal savings into a useless building in a sodden, post-industrial town. He urgently needed a new idea.
然而，在完成收购数月后，苏格兰政府取消了他原本指望的开发商补贴。他刚把大部分个人积蓄砸进了这座位于潮湿萧条的后工业小镇、如今毫无用处的建筑里，急需想出新的出路。
Care homes weren’t so different from hotels, Kilgour thought. And the beauty was, their elderly residents were unlikely to get drunk, steal the soap dispensers or invite sex workers back to their rooms. Turning Station Court into a care home seemed like the best way out of a bad situation. Kilgour arranged a bank loan and in June 1989 he launched Four Seasons Health Care, taking the name from a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan where he had once dined. By sheer luck, Kilgour had found himself at the start of something big.
基尔戈尔心想，养老院和酒店其实大同小异。而且妙处在于，入住的老人几乎不会醉酒闹事、偷拿皂液器，也不会招妓回房。把车站苑改造成养老院，似乎是摆脱困境的最佳选择。他申请了银行贷款，1989年6月，四季医疗护理公司正式成立，公司名取自他曾在曼哈顿中城就餐过的一家餐厅。纯属机缘巧合，基尔戈尔就此踩上了一个巨大风口的起点。
10个月宝宝每天需要喝多少奶粉？
