RESOURCES

Investment firms are buying and bundling contractors, leaving some workers and customers worse off. At 9 a.m. on a Tuesday in late October, as Nathan Hendricks drove to a cabinet installation job in Elk Grove, Calif., he got a call from his office. His employer, Reborn Cabinets, had shut down. All its workers were supposed to return their company vehicles and iPads by the following day. He was not entirely surprised. The company had changed a lot since Audax Group, a private