Blackstone offloads Vitalia to CVC's Vedici

José Rojo
20 July 2015

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Vitalia, a French clinic operator owned by Blackstone since 2006, has been sold by the GP to CVC Capital Partners-backed Vedici.

The transaction, subject to the approval of the French competition authorities, is expected to be finalised during Q4.

Vitalia's enterprise value remains confidential, but sources close to the situation confirmed to unquote" it lies around the €950m mark.

Vitalia will merge its operations with Vedici, acquired by CVC from 3i and Nixen in June 2014. The resulting group is estimated to represent a combined €1.2bn consolidated turnover and 12% of the entire private hospitalisation market in France.

According to both parties, the new business will employ a workforce of 14,000 professionals across 81 healthcare centres. There are plans to dedicate some of the funds to research and development efforts, as well as service personalisation for the 1.2 million patients the group expects to treat on a yearly basis.

Vedici's acquisition of Vitalia was partially financed via CVC's fifth fund, an €11bn vehicle closed in 2008. Co-investing alongside the GP were a number of French institutional investors; a debt facility also partly financed the purchase.

In addition, funds were drawn from the sale of 17 facilities owned by the acquirer, unquote" understands. The package, reportedly worth a combined €651m, was sold to Icade Santé, the real-estate subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.

The sale comes nine years after Vitalia was picked up by Blackstone, which remained the company's sole owner until this point. The GP created the group between 2006 and 2008 by bringing together individual clinics that were previously purchased via the firm's second European real estate fund.

The buyout, announced in 2006, saw Jean-Baptiste Mortier, previously managing director at the GP's Paris office, become Vitalia's CEO. Additional appointments included Christian Le Dorze, named head of the business's supervisory board. According to sources close to the transaction, a debt facility was provided to support Blackstone's takeover and then refinanced by a pool of lenders in 2011.

Blackstone began considering an exit scenario for Vitalia as early as two years after the buyout, when conversations were established with suitors CVC and Holding Batipart.

Blackstone, which had set a €1.2-1.4bn price tag for the business when the process was initiated in April 2008, announced four months afterward that the sale would be postponed. At the time, it was believed an agreement was not reached due to the bidders not meeting Blackstone's conditions.

Divestment plans were thus postponed until late 2014, when Blackstone was approached by a number of bidders including existing healthcare players and suitors from outside the sector, unquote" understands.

Company
Established in 2006, Vitalia is a healthcare operator managing 42 facilities across France. It employs 7,200 professionals and claims to have become the country's second-largest private clinic owner since its inception. In 2014, the Paris-headquartered business posted €705m in revenues, with EBITDA thought to sit around €110m.

Vitalia's new owner, Vedici, was founded in 2000 and operates 35 clinics targeting medicine, surgery and obstetrics services. With a workforce of 7,030 people, the business posted €550m in revenues in 2013. Although a value for EBITDA was not provided, it is understood to have more than doubled under Blackstone nine-year tenure.

Advisers
Equity – Taj, Olivier Venzal, Bertrand Jeannin (Legal).