Description
Private equity firms own airports, data centres, care homes, sports clubs, and more. They thus can influence geopolitics, futures of AI and climate change, and our everyday lives. Private equity has so far mainly been studied as a narrow set of actors, a number of firms that have emerged in the 1970s in the US that have pioneered the leveraged buyout. This focus couches the study of private equity in terms of the 1980s debate and struggle between shareholders and managers of firms. However, this narrow story does not capture the broad nature of private equity today. Therefore, I argue that the rise of private markets necessitates a reframing of the study of private equity, which can be achieved by reconsidering the history of private equity. This paper zooms in on the earlier roots of private equity in merchant and investment banking, showcasing a lineage from earlier US financiers such as J.P. Morgan. In doing so, it situates private equity as a broader phenomenon that spans across a wider range of actors and acknowledges it as a core segment of financial markets pre-1980s and today. This ‘de-exceptionalisation’ enables future analyses of the broader power relations and infrastructure underpinning private equity today.
