Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
NHS landlord Assura has reached a £1.6bn deal to sell itself to a private capital consortium that includes KKR, rejecting a rival bid that would have kept the company in the UK market.
The board of the FTSE 250 group, which owns hundreds of UK doctors’ surgeries and healthcare centres, on Wednesday said it had recommended an all-cash offer of 49.4p per share from KKR and infrastructure specialist Stonepeak Partners.
The £1.6bn bid beat out a £1.5bn cash-and-shares deal from listed rival Primary Health Partners, which the board rejected on Wednesday.
“Against the backdrop of shifting demographic and structural trends, KKR and Stonepeak believe that Assura has a crucial and growing role to play in the provision of critical healthcare infrastructure,” the companies said in a statement.
They added that private ownership would allow Assura “to make sustained capital investments without the need for asset sales”.
The offer represents a 32 per cent premium to Assura’s share price before the bidding went public in February. The company’s portfolio was independently valued at £3.2bn in September.
PHP sweetened its offer earlier this month, to include a higher cash portion. It argued that despite the lower value of its bid, shareholders would benefit from long-term growth and income if the company stayed in the public markets as part of a combined group.
The deal with KKR follows a flurry of deals with smaller UK-listed landlords — including Industrials Reit and Tritax EuroBox — which have been taken private in recent years as real estate suffered through a sharp downturn caused by higher interest rates. Many real estate groups trade big discounts to the value of their assets.
The deal is subject to shareholder approval, and is expected to complete by the autumn.
