MLGPE and Ares in €800m buyout of Euromedic

Hungarian healthcare services group Euromedic International Holdings has been sold by Warburg Pincus. The private equity investor sold the business to Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity (MLGPE) and Ares Life Sciences for a reported enterprise value of €800m after expanding it from a 32-centre, four-country-based company to a pan-European group with 153 centres in 14 countries.

Originally a Hungarian pharmaceutical distribution company, Euromedic is now a specialist provider of dialysis services and diagnostic imaging.

“We didn’t expect to establish a presence in so many Western European countries,” said Nick Lowcock, senior adviser at Warburg Pincus Europe.

“The company was one of the few consolidators in the space and made 30 small acquisitions during the three years we owned it. The quality of the management team appointed at a country level was key to the group’s success,” he added.

The sale of the business, through an auction run by Rothschild, is understood to have generated returns of 3x and an IRR of 60% for Warburg Pincus.

It acquired Euromedic in 2005 alongside GE Healthcare and refinanced it several times during the investment period. GE Healthcare had been an investor in the business since 1999.

Financing for the MLGPE and Ares-led buyout was provided by ING, UniCredit and Bank of Ireland.