Private equity

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The case for recognising Palestine

State of emergency Sir: As someone who spent time undertaking research in Israel and Egypt, living for almost a year on Kibbutz Re’im, one of the communities attacked on 7 October 2023, I find myself in agreement with much of the description in your leading article ‘State of denial’ (26 July) – but not the conclusions. Many of us are aware that Israeli intelligence knew what was being planned for 7 October, but did nothing to prevent it. Why? The horrors that have happened since have played into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters as they seek to create a Greater Israel, with no room left for a

Thursday

William Moore

Soul suckers of private equity, Douglas Murray on Epstein & are literary sequels ‘lazy’?

44 min listen

First up: how private equity is ruining Britain Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children’s homes owned by PE has doubled in the last five years. This ‘gives capitalism a bad name’, he writes. Perhaps the most symbolic example is in the water industry, with water firms now squeezed for money and saddled with debt. British water firms now have a debt-to-equity ratio of 70%, compared to just 4% in 1991. Britain’s desperation for foreign money has, quite literally,

Gus Carter Gus Carter

How private equity ruined Britain

What has happened to Britain’s rivers isn’t a mistake. The fact that serious pollution is up 60 per cent on the year, or that only one in seven rivers can be called ecologically healthy, is the result of corporate tactics. It is effluent from the murky world of private equity. Some 2.5 million people in the UK now work for a business that is ultimately owned by private equity. Since the 2008 financial crisis, Britain has become a prime target for takeovers, driven by low company valuations, favourable exchange rates and a pliable regulatory environment. Everything from Bella Italia to the Blackpool Tower, Travelodge to Legoland, the AA to Zizzi,