A group of private equity firms has met Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) in a fresh bid to quell a heated debate over how the buyout industry operates, Reuters reports.
The British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), which attended the meeting at the TUC offices on Tuesday, and the TUC said jointly that the tone was positive and it was a good start, although there was still much ground to be covered.
“We look forward to these meetings and to an open exchange of views,” says BVCA Chairman Wol Kolade. “We hope they set a pattern of regular dialogue between the BVCA and the TUC.”
In the first of two planned roundtable discussions, representatives from private equity firms 3i Group , Apax Partners, Bridgepoint, CVC Capital, Hermes Private Equity, ISIS Equity Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Lyceum Capital and Permira attended.
The next meeting is planned for the autumn.
An increasingly vocal outcry from UK unions over private equity ownership earlier this year has sparked a global political discussion about the buyout business model and the taxes paid by its top executives.
“Our concerns about the growth of private equity are well known, but with private equity now employing one in 12 of the private sector workforce it makes sense for trade unions to engage with an increasingly important group of employers,” says TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber.
Also taking part in the discussions were fellow unions GMB and Unite-T&G and the Party of European Socialists. The TUC is an umbrella group whose member unions represent about 6.5 million workers.