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Private equity group Varburg Pincus is close to a deal to take a majority stake in French diagnostics group Sevier, valuing the business at 5.4 billion euros, according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal follows an auction process in which several private equity groups competed for the asset. Current owners, including CVC Capital Partners, Thetis Invest and Canada’s La Caisse (formerly known as Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Quebec), will retain minority stakes as part of the transaction.
Varburg’s stake amounts to about a third of the business, with a private equity group the company’s largest shareholder, one of the people said. Warburg’s equity check is partially funded by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
An agreement will likely be announced within days, but the timing is still subject to change, the people said.
The minority stake sale is the latest in a series of private equity-backed healthcare deals in Europe, following the €10 billion sale of generic drug maker Stada to CapVest Partners and Advent’s €4.1 billion acquisition of another generic drug company, Zentiva.
Sevier, which CVC and Thetis first invested in in 2017, values the business at just over €2 billion and specializes in in vitro diagnostics used to identify and monitor a variety of conditions, including certain cancers, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
Varburg Pincus and La Ques declined to comment. Sevier, CVC, Tetis and GIC did not respond to requests for comment.
By the end of August, global healthcare deals reached $198 billion, up 2% year-over-year, according to data from LSEG Intelligence, with private equity closing multiple deals to acquire generic drug makers, contract drug makers and other life sciences companies.
