These companies now own everything from nurseries to care homes, squeezing vital services for profit while we foot the bill
It was the free croissants that gave it away. And the Scandinavian-style furniture. And the tasteful pastel walls. It was different from other nurseries I’d viewed: marginally more expensive, the aesthetic equivalent of a WeWork for toddlers. I was eight months pregnant, on a tour of various nurseries in south-east London for my daughter. At the time, I didn’t realise that this wasn’t just a nursery, but a prototype for an immense experiment that is quietly playing out across Britain.
The nursery I visited is backed by private equity, a surreptitious and tremendously powerful realm of finance that now has its hands on just about everything. Private equity funds and related asset managers own water companies, apartment blocks, student accommodation, care homes, children’s homes, funeral parlours and more. The titans of this industry have perfected a cradle-to-grave model of investment focused on the places we live, work, grow old, and eventually die, capturing these core services and squeezing them for profit.
Hettie O’Brien is a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read, an assistant Opinion editor and the author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, published 9 April
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