Music stops for private equity funds

The British like old-fashioned pubs. They enjoy smoke and sawdust, frayed dartboards, packets of cheese and onion crisps and bottles of beer with German names that are actually brewed in Sunderland. But, surprisingly, they don't like their pubs as much as the giants of the global capital markets. Whatever local boozer you happen to stumble into any King's Arms or Duke of Devonshire will probably turn out to be owned by some remote financial conglomerate. The people running, say, Nomura or Deutsche Bank probably don't know an ale from a bitter or a pork pie from a pork scratching, but tha...