Pacific Equity Partners is lining up for Aurora Healthcare in a potential deal that could see the private equity firm put the business back together with Healthe Care.
China’s Luye Pharma Group placed its Australian private hospital business Healthe Care on the market two years ago, but opted to retain most of the mental health services arm of Healthe Care, which it renamed Aurora Healthcare.
PEP purchased Healthe Care in 2021 for a price believed to be around $400m in a deal that excluded the Aurora Healthcare business.
As a result, PEP secured a portfolio of about 12 acute care hospitals.
It also secured as part of the deal the Brisbane Waters Private Hospital and North West Private Hospital in the Healthe Care portfolio, both of which offer mental health facilities.
Some market experts believe it makes sense to put the groups back together.
Now Luye has placed Auroa Healthcare on the market through investment bank UBS and DataRoom has learned that PEP is lining up.
It will be taking on its Pan-Asian private equity peers like Intermediate Capital Group, but it may have an advantage when it comes to extracting cost benefits because of the Healthe Care business it already owns.
Sydney-based PEP is a prolific investor in the Australian healthcare space, currently owning iNova Pharmaceuticals and Citadel Health.
Aurora, which operates a joint venture with health insurer Medibank, describes itself as a healthcare company that specialises in mental health, rehabilitation, community care, oncology and cardiology.
In Australia, it has 16 private hospitals and community services in Australia’s major cities and key regional areas, with 1000 mental health beds, 500 rehabilitation and medical beds and a range of outpatient day programs, making it one of the largest private providers in Australia’s mental health and rehabilitation sectors.
In Singapore, it specialises in cardiology and oncology and its cancer centres are rank as one of the largest private practices in the country.
Its largest hospital is South Eastern Private in Victoria, which has 159 beds.
Luye purchased Healthe Care from Archer Capital in 2015 for $938m.
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