How to join the private-equity party

Private-equity groups are chewing their way through the FTSE. It’s not ideal – but if you can’t beat ’em...

MoneyWeek cover image - private equity buying frenzy
(Image credit: MoneyWeek cover image - private equity buying frenzy)

Supermarket chain Morrisons is the highest-profile UK-listed company to be targeted by private equity this year. But it’s by no means the first – and it almost certainly won’t be the last. As the Financial Times points out, private-equity firms have now bid for 13 UK-listed businesses since the start of 2021, the highest figure since 1999. If you include private firms in the UK too, the figure rises to 345, the highest on record (going back to 1984).

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.