The Asset Class - Large Print by Hettie O'Brien (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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. 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.

Review Quotes

"The Asset Class is a riveting page-turner; it reads like a thriller that is also deeply educational and masterfully accessible. I will be recommending it to anyone-- my students, colleagues, family--who wants to make sense of the murky new owners of their university halls, place of work or utilities provider."--Rosie Collington, author of The Big Con

"A brilliant and penetrating analysis exposing the larceny that powers the private equity industry. This rollicking tale uncovers tricks that are ultimately so simple and brazen that the mind is repelled, and in the process shows a great undertow sapping our economies and feeding public rage."--Nicholas Shaxson, author of The Finance Curse

"Combining muckraking with moral clarity, Hettie O'Brien tells an utterly original story about how private equity targets people at their most vulnerable, sniffing out weakness to splinter what is left of the postwar social democratic order. Illuminating and infuriating." --Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek's Bastards

"In this truly brilliant and deeply disturbing analysis, Hettie O'Brien opens our eyes to the destructive forces of leveraged finance and the investors whose fortunes keep rising thanks to their embrace by governments."--Katharina Pistor, author of The Code of Capital

About the Author

Hettie O'Brien is a comment editor for the Guardian, where she also writes about social affairs and the incursion of finance into everyday life. She has covered economic and social affairs for the New Statesman, and corporate monopolies and the Federal Trade C ommission while working as a reporter based in Washington D.C . Before becoming a journalist, she worked as a researcher for Rethinking Economics.