Pricing of companies.

Summary How do you decide on the right price for a company? The answer to this question is the main activity of private equity funds, central actors of the new phase of financialization of the economy. This text approaches the analysis of the ways in which prices are set as a particularly crucial moment in the circulation of money in the social space and its distribution between particular sectors and groups of individuals. The determination of prices is thought of as an operation of evaluation as much as of distribution of appropriable capital. It consists in showing, on the basis of qualitative data, how the concrete and local modalities of price setting participate in the solidification of a massive regime of capital accumulation. To do this, he distinguishes three ways in which prices are formed: by the rules of access to capital for members of investment funds, "the reason for the price"; by expectations of capital transferable from the firm to the funds, "the theoretical level of the price"; and by the mechanisms of coordination between the various participants in the exchange, "the effectiveness of the price".