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Brookfield has struck a $1.4bn deal to buy laboratory equipment supplier Antylia Scientific from a private capital rival, according to people familiar with the matter.
The sale allows GTCR to exit a business it has owned on and off for a decade, since it was carved out of life sciences giant Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2014. Golden Gate Capital and Antylia’s management team also held minority shareholdings.
The deal is the latest sign of an uptick in private equity exits despite market turmoil and stubbornly high US interest rates hurting mergers and acquisitions activity. In the first quarter, private equity deals were up 10 per cent year on year to 1,225 transactions, according to an HSBC survey.
Brookfield signed the deal with GTCR and Golden Gate Capital in recent weeks and the acquisition was likely to be announced in the near future unless there were any last-minute issues, the people said. Goldman Sachs and Jefferies advised on the sale.
The asset manager has made several investments in the life sciences sector in recent years, deploying capital from its latest $12bn fund which was raised in 2023 with the aim of investing in late-stage healthcare and industrial technologies business, alongside industrial companies.
Brookfield, Antylia, Golden Gate Capital, GTCR, Jefferies and Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Antylia, which ranks among the world’s biggest laboratory equipment makers, supplies more than 200,000 different pieces of lab equipment. The company’s highest growth division sells equipment used in infectious disease diagnostics and in wastewater analysis.
GTCR and Golden Gate Capital have already realised sizeable returns from the investment. When GTCR bought back into Antylia, which was formerly known as Cole-Parker Scientific, the transaction valued the business at more than $2bn. In 2021, Antylia sold its Masterflex division, which specialises in pumps used for fluid transfer during the production of monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and cell and gene therapies, to biotech group Avantor for $2.9bn.
Antylia, which refinanced nearly $1.75bn worth of debt earlier this year, operates five brands, the biggest of which is Cole-Parmer Essentials.
