Cathay leads €30m funding round for Echosens

José Rojo
30 April 2015

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

Cathay Capital Private Equity has led a €30m financing round for French hepatology diagnostic business Echosens alongside OrbiMed Advisors and a private Chinese fund.

Previously holding a 99.46% stake in Echosens, Chinese parent company FuRui Medical will now retain a 51% shareholding in the business. The trio of investors will hold the remaining 49%, with Cathay securing a significant portion of the stake.

The funding round marks the first investment by Cathay's Sino French Midcap fund. Launched by the mid-market GP in June 2014, the vehicle reached its €500m hard-cap when it held a final close six months later, according to unquote" data.

The buyout fund's commitments came from around 30 LPs. BPI France and China Development Bank were cornerstone investors, contributing €100m each to the capital pool.

Targeting an average €15-50m for its investments, Sino French Midcap plans to make 40% of its investments in France, 40% in China, while the remaining 20% will be distributed across Europe, with an emphasis on Germany.

Echosens aims to use the capital increase to bolster its international expansion, specifically across the North American and Chinese markets.

The liver diagnosis services provider also plans to make targeted acquisitions in the medical technologies sector in order to strengthen its worldwide distribution network.

The funding round marks the fourth investment in a French healthcare company in the past two months, following Ace Management and Auriga Partners' investment in phagotherapy developer Pherecydes Farma's €2.6m round. Meanwhile, London-based MML Capital Partners backed ophthalmology equipment supplier Luneau Technology.

Company
Founded in 2001, Echosens specialises in liver disease diagnosis. The Paris-headquartered business develops medical devices that incorporate vibration-controlled transient elastography technology. The company's product range includes FibroScan, a non-invasive fibrosis and steatosis diagnosis solution used in 70 countries.

People
Cathay Capital Private Equity was represented by president Mingpo Cai. Guanyi Wang is president at FuRui Medical and Claude Lenoir is CEO at Echosens.