Acquisition of Althea Group by F2i and DWS from Permira
On May 10th 2022, F2i SGR S.p.A. (“F2i”), Italy’s largest independent infrastructure fund manager, and DWS Infrastructure (“DWS”), one of the world’s leading asset managers and infrastructure private equity funds, announced the signing of an agreement to acquire 100% of the share capital of Althea Group S.p.A. from Permira.
As part of the Transaction, F2i will acquire the entire share capital of Althea and contextually transfer the UK & Ireland activities to DWS, which will hold them through Inframedica Holdings, the parent company of Medipass S.p.A., or “Medipass” (acquired from KOS back in 2020).
Headquartered in Rome and headed by CEO Alessandro Dogliani, Althea’s history dates back to 2014 from the merger of the Permira’s portfolio companies MESA and Asteral in Pantheon Group (“Pantheon” or the “Group”). In 2017, Althea has been established from the re-branding and integration in Pantheon of a number of relevant acquisitions performed by the Group over the past few years. Today, Althea is the independent pan-European leader in integrated healthcare technology management providing multi-vendor maintenance services of biomedical and advanced diagnostic imaging equipment to both public and private healthcare organizations, with main activities in Italy and in the United Kingdom.
F2i SGR is Italy’s largest independent infrastructure fund manager, with assets under management of over 6 billion euros. The companies belonging to the F2i network make up the country’s main infrastructure platform, spanning key sectors of the national economy: transport and logistics, energy for transition, distribution networks, telecommunications networks, health and social care facilities and circular economy.
DWS Infrastructure is a global leading infrastructure investor and it is part of DWS Group & GmbH Co KGaA, an independent listed asset manager (ETR: DWS) owned by Deutsche Bank. DWS Infrastructure is one of the largest European infrastructure investors and has more than 20 billions euros of assets under management.
In 2021 Althea’s reported run-rate revenues of approx. €460m with EBITDA in excess of €65m.
Mediobanca has closely monitored the asset since 2019, when Permira initially started a sell-side process aimed at disposing the Group. As the process lapsed, Mediobanca initiated a number of bilateral discussions aimed at identifying the ideal buyer for Althea, entertaining regular talks with both Permira and the management of the Company.
As Permira started preparation activities aimed at re-launching the sell-side process following Covid-19 recovery, we reinforced our strong conviction that (i) the core-plus angle of the business would have made the Group appealing for an infrastructure investor and that (ii) the recently announced PNRR would have provided a significant upside in the expected growth of Althea, which is uniquely placed to play a pivotal role in the renovation of the medical infrastructure equipment base of the Italian SSN.
Based on the above considerations, we approached F2i and DWS / Inframedica – which we contributed to create back in 2020 with the acquisition of Medipass. On the back of a thorough outside-in due diligence exercise, we supported the Consortium in submitting a pre-emptive Non-Binding Offer before kick-off of the process, eventually managing to obtain an exclusivity agreement to sign a deal in a 4-week time.
During the exclusivity period, Mediobanca fully supported both F2i and DWS assisting on modeling, due diligence and negotiation activities
The signing of this deal confirms the strengthening of our healthcare expertise, following-up on the recent completion of the Lifenet, Medipass, Hippocrates, Philogen and MIR deals. It also further demonstrates our Mid Corporate & Sponsor Solutions team’s capabilities of executing complex transactions supporting private equity clients throughout all phases of the deal, from origination to seamless execution.
