Bridgepoint makes 4.4x on Attendo exit

Private equity firm Industri Kapital is to buy Attendo, a Swedish care group, from Bridgepoint. Attendo provides care services for elderly and disabled people in the Nordic region. The company won Sweden’s first outsourced home care contract in 1988 and currently generates sales of about SKr2.8bn (US$413m).

Bridgepoint’s investment in Attendo in 2005 valued the company at the time at SKr2.2bn (€245m). The firm approached the Swedish group as an alternative funding source to Attendo’s then-planned IPO. While the consideration for this latest deal has not been confirmed by any of the parties involved, Bridgepoint is thought to have generated a multiple of 4.4x on its original investment.

The company has developed significantly since Bridgepoint acquired a majority stake in February 2005, selling its telecare division to focus on its core business and completing five other acquisitions. Now, the company’s board plans to expand further with the long-term goal of developing a pan-European care group.

“Our strategy going forward includes both organic growth and acquisition-led growth to expand our foothold in the rest of Scandinavia,” said Henrik Borelius, Attendo’s CEO.

Gustav Öhman, partner at Industri Kapital, said the firm chose to invest in Attendo because of the opportunity to combine organic growth with a buy-and-build strategy. “Very few companies are capable of both,” he added, “but Attendo has shown over the last five years that it can.”

Bridgepoint was advised by Goldman Sachs, Mannheimer Swartling, Linklaters, PwC and LEK. Industri Kapital was advised by ABN AMRO, Roschier, Deloitte and McKinsey & Co.