The great care home cash grab: how private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

When did care homes come to be seen as recession-proof investments? And who pays the price? On a spring morning in 1987, a 30-year-old man named Robert Kilgour pulled up beside a row of foamy cherry trees in the town of Kirkcaldy, on Scotland’s east coast, to visit an old hotel. The building was four storeys of blackened Victorian sandstone. Kilgour was a big man, a voluble Scot with a knack for storytelling. He already owned a hotel in Edinburgh but wanted to branch into property development...

By Hettie O'Brien