Comment: help for private equity-backed firms may be unpalatable but will save jobs

One in eight UK jobs are in hospitality, and most of that is these days owned by a small group of private equity giants.

So, it’s a major boon to those millions of workers that the Treasury has changed tack to allow businesses owned by the same PE firm to be considered separately for emergency Covid loans

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, rather than as part of one conglomerate.

It means the £50 million loan cap will be applied to each business, rather than the PE firm which owns them all.

At some stage there will come a backlash over taxpayer-funded bailouts for PE barons who don’t pay much tax.

Let’s deal with that issue later. In the meantime, perhaps the PE firms will make some big, splashy contributions to the Covid battle.

Or perhaps not.

Anyway, for now, we just need to save jobs.