The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself

by Hettie O'Brien

Private equity people are just more tenacious, more ingenious, and more disciplined than just about anyone else. Or so they say. How else did they end up owning everything around us, from the home you rent, to the company that makes you redundant, to the software on which your union tries to fight it? As one insider wrote, 'These folks are built to win.'

But what if there's more to it than that? For decades, private equity companies have been hollowing out industries and infiltrating almost every aspect of modern life. Their leveraged buyouts and asset-stripping have brought healthcare systems, housing, infrastructure, and critical supply chains to the edge of collapse. Is this just the creative destruction that capitalism is meant to thrive on? Or could it be more . . . deliberate?

Join Guardian reporter Hettie O'Brien on a mole hunt from Copenhagen to Barcelona, San Francisco to the Yorkshire Dales, and into a very private empire whose vast scale it takes journalistic ingenuity even to glimpse. Tracing the murky intellectual currents behind the industry's rise, and following the money through some of its most outrageous deals, The Asset Class probes an unsettling that these secretive firms are waging war against our very way of life. By sowing grassroots division on a geopolitical scale, is private equity wilfully colluding in the fall of the West, in the pay of hostile regimes?

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Business, Politics, Finance

320 pages, Hardcover

Published June 23, 2026

Reviews

[Zara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant work by Hettie O’Brien. Well researched and well written, the book focuses on private equity’s encroachment into social infrastructure and how this exploits the very people most dependent on these essential services. It was difficult not to feel infuriated throughout the book.

[Will Hebblethwaite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone needs to read this, but it will make you very angry.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Kath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book-I learnt a lot about private equity and much of it was very disturbing. Enlightening and horrifying.

[Lilly Howes · Rating 4 out of 5]

PE is out of fucking control and we live in an oligarchy

[felix T · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dive into the stories behind private equity focusing on the big asset classes you'll likely have heard about.

Written in journalistic style it's a rather pedestrian tour into the world of PE. It's interesting but somewhat muddled explanation of PE and sometimes mixes it with other classes such as asset management in general .
Nevertheless a worthy read if you're at all interested in how predominantly in the West financiers have bought into the fabric of life and profited immensely from doing so. The only other thing to note is the author's political bias is quite obvious in some parts of the book

[Morgen Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant read but also helps to fill all the gaps in your knowledge. This confirms things I already know but explains the why and provides empirical evidence with interesting insights.
Another great pro is partly what allows the super rich to grow and seem unreachable is through use of terms like neoliberalism, leveraged buy outs and private equity. This books provides definitions to these complex terms.

[Darren Garrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Groundbreaking work. A real eye opener to anyone looking at the state of the UK/US economies right now as well as the scandal that’s absorbed them in the last 40 years.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Detailed, damning, well-written. Recommended.
(Took a while only because I was travelling and didn't have time to read.)

[Maham Saleem · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Solidly researched and relativrlt neutral but feels substantively thin at times