Terra Firma, the UK private equity firm, is resisting calls to establish a contingency social fund to cover the costs of redundancies from workers at Viterra, the German private housing firm it bought last month for €7bn ($8.5bn).

A source close to Terra Firma said that in order to maximise shareholder value, E.On, the German utility and Viterra's vendor, had not insisted on a clause that the private equity firm guarantee jobs.