Warburg Pincus wins Safety-Kleen

Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm, has acquired Safety-Kleen Europe from JPMorgan Partners and CCMP Capital Advisors in a secondary buyout valuing the industrial cleaning components business at about £565m (€716.4m). The firm is also looking to exit Hungarian healthcare firm Euromedic International.

Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch and Clifford Chance advised Warburg Pincus on the transaction, which is expected to close in June. Goldman Sachs and Kirkland and Ellis advised Safetykleen Europe.

CCMP Capital, spun out of JPMorgan in 2005, hired Goldman Sachs to launch a strategic review of Safetykleen Europe last December. At the time, the expected price tag was about £600m.

Warburg Pincus will be the third private equity owner for Safetykleen Europe, an Isleworth-based provider of parts and component cleaning machines and services for the automotive and general industrial sectors. The company operates through 71 branches and 19 satellite operations in 13 countries including Brazil, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Under CCMP Capital, Safetykleen Europe acquired Malary Environmental Services, a Cambridgeshire-based water oil collection business, in July 2006.

RBS has been mandated to arrange the £300m debt backing the deal and is likely to initiate a senior MLA/JLA syndication phase in the near term, to be followed by a general syndication.

The sponsor won the deal in a competitive auction that featured four other private equity bidders: Blackstone, Cinven, Hellman & Friedman and Montagu.

Warburg Pincus is also believed to be close to selling Euromedic, the largest private provider of diagnostic imaging and haemodialysis treatment services in Central and Eastern Europe, in a deal reported to be worth between €700m and €1bn, making it the biggest private equity sale in Europe this year and the largest ever in Hungary.

A host of private equity names have bid for the business, which was acquired by Warburg in July 2005 from Dresdner Kleinwort Capital and GE Equity. Potential suitors this time around include 3i, Apax Partners, Mid Europa Partners, Advent International, Bridgepoint and Cinven. Bridgepoint is reported to be planning a joint bid with Dubai International Capital.

Last year Euromedic achieved revenues of €139m and Ebitda of €28m. For the coming year it predicts revenues will rise to €284m with Ebitda at €64m, and for the following year to €467m and €119m respectively, following 64% Ebitda growth per annum between 2005 and 2007.

Last week, Warburg Pincus announced that it had raised US$15bn for its 10th global fund, bringing total assets under management to more than US$35bn.