Australia's biggest radiology network just found a new owner – and it wasn't Australian.
Permira, the London-based buyout firm that acquired I-MED Radiology seven years ago, this week agreed to sell the business to Jardine Matheson for $3.4 billion – ending what had been shaping up as one of the year's most anticipated IPOs. The deal gives Jardine Matheson 100 per cent ownership of the largest radiology business in the Asia Pacific region, with 250 clinics across Australia and New Zealand generating $1.5 billion in revenue and $260 million EBITDA last financial year.
Jardine Matheson is a 194-year-old London-listed conglomerate with a portfolio spanning real estate, retail and hospitality across Asia. I-MED is its first major global healthcare investment and is a meaningful pivot for a business better known for shopping centres, rather than CT scanners. CEO Lincoln Pan is expected to retain I-MED's existing management team, signalling the play is long-term ownership rather than a quick restructure.
For Permira, it draws a line under a two-year exit process that included two failed auction rounds where Macquarie Asset Management and Bain Capital both made offers that fell short, before Jefferies' Michael Stock convinced his client to run a dual-track process exploring both an IPO and a trade sale simultaneously. The private sale evidently won.
I-MED is the third major IPO candidate to slip through the ASX's fingers this year, joining La Trobe Financial and Estia Health as businesses that chose a private exit over a public listing. All three had run dual-track processes. All three sold privately in the end, a quiet but telling signal about where vendors see more certainty right now.
The acquisition also includes I-MED's stake in Harrison.AI, the medical imaging AI company, which adds a technology dimension to what is otherwise a bricks-and-mortar healthcare deal. For a conglomerate trying to establish itself in healthcare for the first time, that's not a bad place to start.
