Yahoo Finance Funds Plot Sale Of NHS Equipment Supplier
A leading supplier of diagnostic imaging equipment to the NHS is being groomed for a sale by the City funds which took control of it six years ago.
Sky News has learnt that the owners of Alliance Medical, which operates CT scanners and X-ray machines, have appointed Rothschild, the investment bank, to oversee a review of the business.
Alliance Medical counts the former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind among its former board members.
Parliament's standards commissioner last year cleared him of any wrongdoing following a cash-for-access row.
A sale would value Alliance Medical at hundreds of millions of pounds, although the exact price tag was unclear on Monday.
Sources close to it said that a refinancing or partial disposal would also be considered, and that an outright sale was not inevitable.
Alliance Medical's largest shareholders include M&G Investments, the fund management arm of Prudential (HKSE: 2378.HK - news) , which became an investor in 2010 when the company undertook a major debt restructuring.
The company had been owned by Bridgepoint, a private equity group, which sold it to Dubai International Capital (DIC (Taiwan OTC: 1818.TWO - news) ) in 2007 for £600m.
It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) was the latest in a string of restructuring deals involving assets owned by DIC - such as Travelodge, the hotel chain - in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
DIC was left with an equity stake of just 2.5% following the debt-for-equity swap at Alliance Medical.
The diagnostics group reported sales of £213m last year and pre-tax profits of £56.5m in the year ended March 2015, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
Government healthcare cuts have impacted its public sector revenues, although it has weathered that storm by growing its income from private sector customers.
In recent years, it has expanded its geographical reach, now operating in Germany, Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) , Italy and Spain as well as its core UK market.
An Alliance Medical spokesman said: "Rothschild has been retained to look at strategic options for the business (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) ."
