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NEW YORK - One of America's fastest-growing unions is promising to bring a European-style campaign against private equity to the United States for the first time - and the organisation has chosen as its first target the flotation of Blackstone, the world's premier buy-out firm.
The Service Employees International Union says that the US has lagged behind Europe in launching a debate about the effects of private equity's takeover of large parts of the economy.
And it says that as increasing numbers of its members in the healthcare, property services and the public services are transferred to private equity-owned companies, it wants to ensure they get fair treatment at the same time as industry executives reap huge personal fortunes from the deals.
For its first salvo, the union has set up a website to "monitor" coverage of this summer's US$40 billion ($55.7 billion) initial public offering by Blackstone, which will generate a payday running into hundreds of millions of dollars for the firm's founders.
The union's website (www.blackstonerevealed.blogspot.com) promises to go "inside the Blackstone IPO". Because Blackstone is the first buy-out firm to go public, its prospectus promises to shed light on a secretive industry.
Already the SEIU has raised issues such as the preferential tax treatment of private equity companies and the speed with which they buy and sell, or "flip", the assets they buy in order to generate big profits.
Blackstone revealed 10 days ago that it was planning an IPO of a US$4 billion slice of the company, which analysts believe would value it at up to US$40 billion.
However, potential investors will get little say in the company's future despite their investment.
The company has set up a Byzantine ownership structure to allow Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone's founder, to continue to rule the company as if it were a private partnership.
- INDEPENDENT
