The Asset Class
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For decades, private equity firms have infiltrated every corner of modern life. Wielding debt as a weapon, they push vital services into...
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.
Published By Grand Central Publishing
Format Paperback
Number Of Pages 424
Publication Date 06/23/2026
ISBN 9781538783122
Dimensions 6 inches x 9 inches
"Hettie O'Brien provides shocking stories, lucid explanation, and an urgent call to action. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand how this Frankenstein form of finance stacked the deck against the rest of us."—Nancy MacLean, author of National Book Award Finalist Democracy in Chains
"The Asset Class shows you who really rules the world. Then it shows them fracking your granny. Read if you want to know who precisely it is to blame for, well, everything." —Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland and Everyone Loves Our Dollars
“Revolutions are destined to eat their own children. Hettie O’Brien captures this moment beautifully as the capitalist revolutionaries of Private Equity turn their over levered funds into financial weapons of mass destruction aimed at all of us. An absolute scandal and an absolute must read." —Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: the History of a Dangerous idea
"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
"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
"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
"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
“Intriguing and informative.”
—Booklist
“Clear-eyed…O'Brien tells all, and it's maddening.”
—Kirkus Reviews