TAX AND PRIVATE EQUITY

As if by magic my earlier blog question has been answered. A story in the Daily Telegraph, not normally anti-business, highlights the issue. I think most reasonable people have no axe to grind with a person who sets up a business from scratch and goes on to make trillions. What concerns them are people who buy up ready-made running businesses, fiddle about a lot, then scarper with the excess money. Where are the checks and balances? In the real world of proper business I might buy something from Bill Gates, admiring his skill but glad that the price has been kept realistic thanks to the incredible imagination of Steve Jobs, from whom I might also go and buy something. Think what it would be like if the private equity industry - and here we must be glad the two aforenamed gentlemen have made so much money - bought both businesses. Prices would go through the roof and the quality of the goods would no longer be a pre-requisite since competition would have died.