Advent buys Industria Chimica Emiliana

Alessia Argentieri
01 October 2019

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

Private equity firm Advent International has wholly acquired Industria Chimica Emiliana (ICE), an Italian company specialising in the production of cholic acid used for the treatment of gastric and liver diseases.

Unquote understands that the deal gives the company an enterprise value of around €600m, which equates to approximately 15x its EBITDA.

Advent won the auction for the company seeing off competition from several private equity rivals, including Bain Capital, Cinven and Astorg, according to press reports.

The vendors are the company's founding Bartoli family, who will continue to have an active role in the management with Enzo Bartoli as chair.

Unquote understands that the GP deployed capital from Advent International GPE IX, which held a final close in June 2019 on its hard-cap of $17.5bn. The vehicle writes equity tickets of $100m-1bn to invest in companies with enterprise value of $50m-3.5bn, operating in the healthcare, industrial, consumer, TMT and retail sectors, and based across North America and Europe.

In addition, KKR deployed a unitranche facility to support the acquisition of ICE, Unquote understands.

Advent intends to further strengthen the company's market position, develop its production capabilities and boost its expansion via a buy-and-build strategy, which will be pursued both in Italy and internationally.

Company
Founded in 1949, ICE specialises in manufacturing ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), an active pharmaceutical ingredient sourced from ox bile, primarily used in drugs treating gastric and liver diseases.

The company is headquartered in Reggio Emilia, with subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and North America, and employs 1,000 people. It generated an EBITDA margin of around 25% from revenues of €160m.

People
Advent International – Francesco Casiraghi (managing director).
Industria Chimica Emiliana – Enzo Bartoli (co-founder, chair).

Advisers
Equity – Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (legal); Kirkland & Elllis (legal); Ropes & Gray (legal); Mattos Filho (legal); AZB (legal); Deutsche Bank (corporate finance); Nomura (corporate finance).
Company – Bonelli Erede (legal); Studio Ferrarini (legal); PwC (financial due diligence).