Ordinary investors are missing out as private equity takes over

Companies are turning their backs on public stockmarkets and raising more and more money from private equity. Merryn Somerset Webb explains why this is a problem for ordinary investors – and perhaps for capitalism itself.

Woman wearing a face mask outside the London Stock Exchange © Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The cost of a public stockmarket listing has risen hugely since the 1990s
(Image credit: Woman wearing a face mask outside the London Stock Exchange © Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

When Jeff Bezos took Amazon public in 1997, the company was three years old. He needed $50m and the public markets were the only place to get it.

This week, ecommerce firm The Hut Group announced plans to list in the UK. The company is 14 years old and is looking to raise just over $1bn. But the reason for its listing is not raising cash: it has instead been prompted by a “request for liquidity” from backers. Those backers? Private equity features heavily: KKR owns 19% of the business.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.