Private equity’s dominance has gone too far

THG was among the British businesses receiving takeover approaches from private equity on Monday. Photograph: Timon Schneider/Alamy

Here it is then: private equity’s long-predicted raid on the UK’s ranks of mid-sized quoted companies. Last week, Dechra Pharmaceuticals, a veterinary medicine group, said it had received a potential cash bid of £4.6bn from EQT, the Swedish private equity firm. Then Network International, a payments processor in the Middle East and Africa, said it was in talks with the European private equity titan CVC plus Francisco Partners from the US.

On Monday, the Aberdeen-based oilfield services group John Wood, after putting up stout resistance for weeks, said it was open to talks with Apollo of the US. And Apollo popped up again mid-morning with a tentative approach to THG, the headline-hogging e-commerce retailer formerly called The Hut Group.