The Asset Class - How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself

'Bang on the money' Guardian
'Reads like a financial thriller' New Statesman
'Astonishing' Irish Times
'Read this if you want to know who precisely is to blame for, well, everything' Oliver Bullough



A thrilling, eye-opening investigation into private equity, a secretive wing of the finance industry that is so relentlessly destructive, it could have been created to undermine our way of life
You don't know their names, but they own the house you rent. They own your hospitals, nurseries and care homes, the media you consume and the companies you work for. They even own the tools your union uses to fight back. Business is a contest - and they say their people are built to win. But when does competition become a struggle to the death?For decades, private equity firms have infiltrated every corner of modern life. Wielding debt as a weapon, they push vital services into crisis. Their cover story: that this is merely the 'creative destruction' essential to growth. Old-school capitalists say they're dismantling everything that made our economies work.

In The Asset Class, reporter Hettie O'Brien penetrates a hidden empire of billion-dollar deals and covert financial warfare. From Copenhagen to San Francisco, Barcelona to the Yorkshire Dales, she follows the money, the ideological roots and the trail of destruction. What she finds is chilling: private equity isn't just reshaping the economy - it's selling out the foundations of Western society.

The new owners think they can hide in the shadows. But the owned are fighting back.

'Financial journalism at its best . . . utterly terrifying' Peter Oborne
'Rollicking' Nicholas Shaxson
'Dazzling' Ha-Joon Chang
'Essential' Grace Blakeley
'Powerful and necessary' Mariana Mazzucato
'Deftly lifts the curtain on a murky world of greed and destruction' Danny Dorling