hettie o’brien

Companies are being stripped bare, employees are losing their jobs, and prices for essential services are soaring. Increasingly, private equity firms are buying up healthy institutions to line their own pockets through shady financial arrangements. Journalist Hettie O’Brien shows how this form of capitalism is reshaping the economy, but also putting the foundations of Western society up for sale. What can we do to combat the increasing plundering of the healthcare, education and housing sectors?

Writer and journalist Hettie O’Brien is fascinated by money, power and the blind spots that arise when the state neglects welfare. She writes for publications including The Guardian, covering financiers, fraudsters, shopping centres, the incompetence of government regulation, the plundering of the private financial sector, cities, stoicism and much more. Her first book, The Asset Class, is due out this spring.