Services

Healthcare Services has been a very active sector for private equity over the last few years. Governments increasingly see their role being as purchasers rather than direct providers of healthcare services and this has created significant opportunities for the private sector to grow, often with the assistance of private equity investment.

The UK has led the way in investing in services, particularly in the care homes and hospitals sector.  Investors have often been attracted to the property backed nature of many of the businesses and the opportunities to act as consolidators in growing markets. In the UK the two biggest hospitals groups are now owned by private equity (GHG, Spire) and there has been extensive investment in small (Care Aspirations, Care Management Group), medium (Craegmoor, Voyage Group) and large cap (Four Seasons, Priory) businesses. There is now an appetite to look at highly fragmented sectors such as domiciliary care, clinical laboratories or emerging sectors such as hospital avoidance.

Though the UK has been the most active region in Europe for private equity investment in services there have been notable deals in other European countries. In hospitals, for example, there have been transactions in Sweden (Capio), Spain (United Surgical Partners), France (Group Médi-Partenaires) and Greece (Hygea) to name a few. Increasingly interest is turning to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe with their growing middle classes and rapidly changing healthcare systems.