Thread by @docrussjackson

#Thread

Private equity firms spent £33BILLION buying up British firms in the first half of this year!

£530m takeover of 178yr old LV, founded to help Liverpool’s poor bury their dead, by US private equity firm Bain Capital means LV would no longer be owned by its 1.2m members.

Private equity refers to investment funds organised as limited partnerships that buy & restructure companies not publicly traded on a stock exchange.

Private equity predators have become notorious for taking quick profits while slashing jobs & leaving behind long-term problems.

There is a debate around the distinction between private equity & foreign direct investment (FDI), and whether to treat them separately. The difference is blurred on account of private equity not entering the country through the stock market.

Private-equity investments in health care & related services, such as nursing homes & hospitals, are alleged to have decreased the quality of care while driving up costs.

Back in 2014, @unitetheunion released a list of 70 MPs with proven links to private healthcare providers.

Private equity ownership leads to pressure to increase profitability, which in the health & care sector, means concerns about patient safety.

In the US, researchers found that private-equity ownership of nursing homes increased short-term mortality of Medicare patients by 10%.

Some claim that private equity *captures* wealth rather than *creating wealth*, & this capture can be "zero-sum, or even value-destroying, in aggregate: assets get shuffled & reshuffled, profits get made, but relatively little flows toward actual productive uses." - Oren Cass.

Private Equity contributes to #inequality: it offers investors higher returns than those available in public stocks & bonds markets.

Yet, to enjoy those returns, it helps to already be rich high-net-worth individual investors or institutions such as endowments.

Private Equity also puts pressure on the lower end of the wealth divide. Companies can be broken up, merged, or generally restructured to make "efficiency saving" & "increase productivity", which in reality, inevitably means job cuts, & too often, lowering working conditions.

Back in August, Reuters reported that this year's unprecedented private equity buying spree in Britain was causing unease among politicians, trade unions & investors, about potential job losses & rising debt.

Free-market capitalism is destroying Britain.

reuters.com/business/uk-sa…

John Redwood earned £5,000/year for 12 hours work on the advisory board of Epic Private Equity.

In 2017 then environment secretary Michael Gove was one of many MPs disclosing payments from private investment firms.

#ToryCorruption

fnlondon.com/articles/micha…

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell has SIX ‘second jobs’ earning more than double his MP’s salarym including a "corporate intelligence" firm & one named in the Pandora Paper leaks, along with several high-paying investment firms.

nationalworld.com/news/politics/…

Mitchell's jobs include Investment firm Kingsley Capital Partners employing him as a senior adviser on £50,000/year for an annual commitment of eight days per year, equating to £83,151 since January 2020.

#ToryCorruption

Mitchell also has advisory & consultancy roles with Ernst & Young, Archway Emerging Partners & Investec, which net Mitchell a combined £57,000/yr.

He held another role as advisor to UK Global Health Care until February 2020, earning £30,000/yr.

The FT raised concerns in 2019:

Private equity sharks have now set their sights on Britain's banking sector - is Metro Bank next? If so, this would see yet another company disappear from the stock market & fall into the hands of a profit-hungry private equity firm based overseas. 🇬🇧

thismon.ee/a/10167023

Keep calm & carry on? No. Get angry & change the system!

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1458024794906152968

Or alternatively...

Original picture from the film Threads, additional design: @teacherdude.