The £1.6bn spent by new Bupa CEO Stuart Fletcher are paying off with 2014 sales ahead 15% at constant exchange rates at £9.8bn in 2014. We talk to him about PMI, deals with hospitals and future plans.
The two largest private equity investors in Africa, Abraaj and the Investment Fund for Health in Africa, are both raising new funds. So how are they progressing and what are their strategies? We investigated at the Africa Healthcare Summit in London.
In 2013 private equity investment in Africa rose 130% to $3.3bn, yet African healthcare service operators tell us that finding serious investors is all but impossible. That is reflected in the coupon on a recent bond issue and in the failure of Hygeia, the largest Nigerian private operator and HMO to find a buyer. Why, given that cash payments make up 80% of sales in many countries and many governments are ready to welcome private operators. We spoke to experts at the Africa Healthcare Summit in London.
Interview: Ameera Shah, Owner & Managing Director, Metropolis Healthcare. Ameera set up Metropolis when she was just 20. Fourteen years on, the business is one of the big three labs in India. It is the only one of the big three to expand abroad with lab operations in seven countries across Africa, the Middle East and Sri Lanka. It carries out 15 million tests a year through 125 labs and 800 phlebotomy centres. Ameera is also speaking at our annual conference in London on April 28, 2015.
Just had a fascinating chat with Ameera Shah, who set up a lab chain, Metropolis Healthcare in India in 2002 when she was 20. Since then, she has grown it to one of the top three in the country and expanded into (wait for it) Kenya, South Africa, UAE, Nigeria, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Mauritius!
International expansion within the healthcare services sector is happening at speed. The last month has seen Spanish hospital group Hospiten announce its acquisition of five hospitals on the Mexican pacific coast from Amerimed, Ramsay Healthcare announce a joint venture in China and Interhealth Canada get the go-ahead for the first operator-led PPP in Eastern Europe at Zywiec in Poland. But all of this is to look at internationalisation through a Western prism.
Zywiec Hospital in Poland, the first operator PPP project for a hospital in East Europe, should get signed off in November 2014, after a three years of delay. We look at the implications.
No other private equity house can match Abraaj’s experience of investing in healthcare services in the developing world. A lead investor in Turkish hospital group Acibadem, which was then sold to IHH, the international hospital chain, Abraaj has rolled out a lab buy and build in Egypt, Africa and the Middle East, has recently started a similar play building a Pan-North African chain of hospitals and has also invested in half a dozen hospital and outpatient clinics across sub-Saharan Africa. Ahmed will be speaking at Healthcare Europa 2015 on April 28 in London.
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