Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

The Plundering Oligarch You Haven’t Heard Of

Private-equity magnate Jeffrey Leerink has been busy pillaging healthcare and the life sciences.

For such a busy bee, the private-equity oligarch Jeffrey Leerink has really managed to fly under the radar. No major media outlet in the Boston area, where he operates, has seriously investigated his role in any number of headline-grabbing scandals. You’ve probably never even heard of him, but he was a key player in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the financing of the now-bankrupt for-profit hospital system Steward Health Care. Now he’s hard at work trying to expand an ecologically disastrous private-jet airport.

In 2019, Leerink sold his private investment bank, Leerink Partners, to the infamous SVB for $280 million and stayed on to manage the bank’s securities arm. The rest is history: SVB’s March 2023 collapse and subsequent federal seizure was the largest bank failure since the 2008 economic meltdown. The whole sordid affair was a textbook example of a disaster that could have been averted had Congress not capitulated to the bankers that lobbied for deregulation.

More From Chuck Collins

Have You Paid Your “Intuit Tax”? March 23, 2026

Have You Paid Your “Intuit Tax”?

The Pork Oligarchs of Iowa Have Local Politicians in Their Pockets March 12, 2026

The Pork Oligarchs of Iowa Have Local Politicians in Their Pockets

The Billionaire Oligarchs Are Coming for Your Pets October 29, 2025

The Billionaire Oligarchs Are Coming for Your Pets

As Leerink leaped from the sinking SVB ship, reestablishing Leerink Partners, he plundered from the fields of life sciences and healthcare. He handled financing for Steward Health Care, cofounded by the oligarch Ralph de la Torre. A cardiac surgeon, de la Torre was formerly CEO of Caritas Christi, a nonprofit hospital network of six acute-care facilities in eastern Massachusetts owned by the Archdiocese of Boston. In 2010, he brought in the private-equity fund Cerberus Capital to acquire the hospital network for $246 million and convert it to a for-profit system.

Rebranded as Steward Health Care with de la Torre as CEO, it........

© The Nation