The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself

A thrilling, eye opening investigation into private equity, a secretive wing of the finance industry that is so relentlessly destructive, it could potentially undermine our way of life.

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. The name itself, "private equity," is its own kind of camouflage, giving no suggestion of the debt involved in its deals, nor of the controversial techniques it uses to generate profits. 

The new owners think they can hide in the shadows. But the owned are fighting back. In The Asset Class, 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 follow the money, the trail of destruction, and the industry’s murky ideological roots from 1970s trips to Moscow to the present day. 

What she find is chilling: private equity isn't just reshaping the economy—it's selling out the foundations of Western society.

Hettie O'Brien is a lead writer and assistant opinion editor at the Guardian, and a regular contributor at the Guardian Long Read. She previously worked as a writer and editor at the New Statesman, and as a reporter covering the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C.