Can private equity be allowed to continue doing business in private? Surely not, in the light of the huge scale of the transactions now taking place. Alliance Boots, currently under siege from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Terra Firma, employs more than 100,000 and has 2,600 healthcare outlets across the UK’s high streets. If, as seems likely, this becomes the first FTSE 100 company to go private in an £11bn ($22bn) takeover – potentially Europe’s largest private equity deal to date – questions have to be asked about the public interest involved.

With the volume of buy-out activity across the world running at $667bn last year, large chunks of the global corporate sector are becoming less transparent. In jurisdictions such as the US, where there is no requirement for private companies to make accounts publicly available, much information about business activity is disappearing into a black hole.