03.11.2026
How Private Equity Erodes Our Societies
With Hettie O'Brien
In recent decades, private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, and the Carlyle Group have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own our hospitals, our nurseries, our schools, our farmland, our wind farms. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the houses we rent and the food we eat. In doing so, they have reshaped capitalism in their own image – all by using debt as a weapon to produce vast returns for the companies that own and control them.
On Tuesday, November 3, we welcome acclaimed Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself. In the book, she takes readers on a thrilling, eye-opening investigation into this secretive wing of the finance industry, revealing how it is reshaping our everyday lives and how power and wealth now operate. She follows the money across continents and examines how a hidden group of dealmakers created a weapon of economic mass destruction that might yet blow up our financial system.
Hettie O’Brien will be joined in conversation by financial economist and Follow the Money journalist Thomas Bollen, author of ‘Geld genoeg, maar niet voor jou’ (‘Plenty of Money, but Not for You’), which explores how our financial system distributes wealth and power, and how we could reclaim control over our money.
Participants
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Hettie O’Brien
Hettie O’Brien is a staff writer at the Guardian, and a regular contributor at the Guardian Long Read. She previously worked as a writer and editor at the New Statesman, and as a reporter covering the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C. Her work exposes how complex systems and financial arrangements are transforming our lives by telling stories about the people and places they shape.
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Thomas Bollen
Thomas Bollen is a financial economist and investigative journalist at Follow the Money, where he writes about financial malpractice, economic dogmas and their alternatives. His work makes the world of money accessible and examines how financial systems shape society. Together with artist Carlijn Kingma and economist Martijn Jeroen van der Linden, he developed ‘The Waterworks of Money’, a project mapping the international financial system. In 2025, he published ‘Geld genoeg, maar niet voor jou’, exploring the struggle over money and the possibilities for meaningful change.
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Hani Salih
Hani Salih is a researcher, writer, editor and curator sitting at the edge of a long list of disciplines and practices; Starting with architecture all the way over to systems and policy. Hani is interested in understanding wider contexts to social and cultural phenomena and is currently doing this through his teaching work in architecture and design education.
