Jon Moulton, one of the most recognisable faces of the private equity industry today slammed his peers for pushing out “dodgy statistics” in an effort to improve the sector’s battered image.

The outspoken founder and managing partner of Alchemy said he was “horrified” at the data that industry lobby groups and private equity firms themselves were publishing in a bid to deflect criticism of the industry as fast and loose financiers who move in and slash jobs.

“I am relatively horrified to see that we’re using very dodgy statistics,” Mr Moulton said.

He said recent figures from the British Venture Capital Association, the industry’s lobby group, attempted to show that employment in private equity-owned firms was up 8 per cent. But he said the data was misleading because it did not take into account that any private equity backed companies go bust. Nor were they adjusted on an annualised basis.

“If you use an adjusted figure, the number should be more like zero,” Mr Moulton told an audience of investors.

“We’re putting these things out as fact and we shouldn’t.”

Mr Moulton said private equity executives were still viewed by politicians and trade unions as “rich capitalist swines” and said tougher regulation was starting to bear down on the industry despite the fact there was no real evidence of any wrongdoing.

“We’ve got plenty of enemies,” he said. “Envy makes us a great target.”

The British financier was speaking on the opening day of the industry’s annual SuperReturn conference in Germany. Last year’s gathering came at the height of union and political attacks but this year’s event promises to be much more low key, with the world’s attention now focused on a potential imminent recession in America and Europe.

A crowd of union protestors gathered outside the conference centre in Munich this morning but they were quickly dispersed by the police as one by one, the millionaire buyout bosses arrived in their black limousines.

But Mr Moulton gave warning that the spotlight would quickly fall back on the beleaguered industry once private equity-owned companies started to fail, which he said was inevitable.

“There are some savagely leveraged companies out there,” he said.

“There’s no getting away from the uncomfortable truth that extreme debt is dangerous”.

He pointed to several of the biggest megadeals closed last summer, at the height of the M&A boom. Transactions such as the buyout of Freescale, Pages Jaunes and ProSeiben where their debt is now trading way below par, at 80 cents on the dollar or less.

If the senior debt has lost that much value: “How do you get away with valuing the equity at cost?” Mr Moulton asked.

The result is that for the foreseeable future investors who have put their money into private equity will see their returns fall and there will be no opportunities to refinance existing companies with cheaper debt, let alone buy any new ones.

“Companies will go bust …companies will get into trouble,” he warned.

Mr Moulton could not resist a swipe at the investment banks whom he chiefly blames for causing the credit crisis in the first place thanks to their reckless lending to low income American families.

“They bought piles of this rubbish too … and now find themselves holding the baby.” Mr Moulton jeered.

“The banks aren’t coming back for a while (and) it may actually yet be getting worse.”

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