The Asset Class

The Asset Class Synopsis

'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

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