A team of more than 10 Guardian journalists, designers, and developers spent months investigating the full extent of private equity's stake in Britain's public and essential services. The investigation, published earlier this week, found that as many as one in eight workers in Britain are now employed by companies ultimately controlled by private equity firms. The project combined data journalism, whistleblower accounts, and visual storytelling to illuminate a largely opaque sector.
From Childcare to the Whole Economy
The investigation began three years ago when data projects editor Carmen Aguilar García and her colleagues started examining private equity involvement in England's childcare sector. At the time, scaling that work to the entire UK economy seemed unrealistic. However, the team eventually built a custom database of UK companies controlled by private equity, mapping group structures and extracting information on controlling parties and employee counts.
Private equity firms use investor money to buy businesses, reshape them, and sell them for profit. While advocates argue the model drives growth and efficiency, critics raise concerns about vulnerabilities from debt-heavy financing, especially in public services. The Guardian's investigation aimed to shed light on these issues.
Challenges of Opacity and Accuracy
A major challenge was identifying which companies were actually controlled by private equity. Some firms do not disclose their backing, while labyrinthine ownership structures risk overcounting. To avoid double-counting employees, the team had to deconsolidate large corporate structures. Carmen Aguilar García explained: "We had to build our own database of UK companies that are controlled by a private equity firm, map the whole group structure for each of those companies, and extract information related to the controlling party and the number of employees in each company."
The project drew on procurement data from Tussell, employment data from the ONS, financial database PitchBook, Companies House data, and annual accounts. A large language model (LLM) helped collect information about ultimate controlling parties, but a team of five journalists manually verified every response against original sources. "If either (data or methodology) were not robust enough the story could be wrong. So if we aren't confident about the data, we don't publish," said Carmen.
Whistleblower Insights and On-the-Ground Reporting
Social affairs correspondent Jessica Murray joined the project after receiving an anonymous tip from a worker at a private equity-owned children's home. Her reporting highlighted the human impact: an Ofsted inspection of one home found it was "chaotic" with "high levels of distress" among children. "I was really shocked by what was in those reports," Jessica said. "We're not only showing how much private equity is taking over all these different services, we're also showing what it can sometimes mean for an individual."
Jessica also discovered that many politicians lack understanding of private equity. When asked for comment, some said they did not feel qualified to discuss it. This underscored the need for public service journalism to demystify the sector.
Visual Storytelling to Explain Complex Finance
To make private equity concepts accessible, visual projects editor Anna Leach and senior digital designer Prina Shah created a visual explainer using a fictional veterinary practice. The explainer illustrated leveraged buyouts, where private equity firms borrow heavily to acquire businesses and saddle them with debt. "Business and finance are areas people are very affected by, but they often don't understand the intricacies of it," Anna said.
The team used toy figurine models to switch seamlessly between 2D flow diagrams and 3D scenes. Prina Shah noted: "The use of models lent themselves perfectly to sitting within a 3D world but could also be easily shrunk to be used as icons in a 2D flow diagram."
Balanced Reporting and Industry Defence
The investigation also presented the private equity industry's defence, acknowledging that the model can be beneficial when done right. "We were very aware that it's more complicated than private equity being good or bad," Jessica said. The articles included industry perspectives to give readers a balanced view.
Methodology and Transparency
The Guardian's methodology combined multiple data sources and manual verification to ensure accuracy. The final list of private equity-controlled companies was matched with public procurement data to calculate spending. The team deconsolidated employee counts to avoid double-counting and removed international employees where possible. The analysis is a snapshot in time, differing from similar studies by the Bank of England and EY in scope and approach.
Carmen Aguilar García reflected on the project: "Resilience, adaptation and a problem-solving mentality are essential, but also believing that what you are doing is an important contribution to society and that people deserve to know. And we had all of this."
