Luke Johnson, the pizza entrepreneur turned media executive, has launched a stinging attack on the European Commission's plan to regulate hedge funds and private equity.
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His comments are part of a frantic fightback by the private equity industry designed to water down the law. The Commission is holding a key meeting on Monday to discuss the draft directive before its publication on Wednesday.
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The incoming law has triggered a tit-for-tat lobbying battle between the private equity industry, led by bosses in the UK, Europe's biggest buy-out market, and their fiercest political critics in the European parliament's Socialist group.

Jonathan Russell, chairman of the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, told the Financial Times that he was "really disappointed" by how the new law had become "a political football" before European parliamentary elections this year.

In a letter last week to José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, leaders of the Socialist group, the second-largest bloc in the parliament, said the proposal was so "filled with loopholes" that it would be "highly ineffective" in regulatory terms.