• European Healthcare

European Healthcare
A thought leadership publication from GE Healthcare Financial Services in association with mergermarket
March 2008
Contents
Foreword 1
European Healthcare 3
The future for medical technology and devices 8
Case Study: Nucletron 13
Forces for change in the pharmaceutical sector 14
Healthcare services going private 17
Case Study: Gambro 18
An uneven battle in European biotech? 21
Case Study: Arrow Therapeutics 24
European Healthcare M&A Historical Data 25
Contacts 28
Foreword
M&A activity in the healthcare sector is showing no sign of dwindling. Indeed, in
the past three years the sector, which comprises medical technology and devices,
pharmaceuticals, hospitals and other services, and biotechnology, has remained a
focus for M&A activity, with some 2,569 M&A transactions globally worth €477bn,
according to mergermarket. Furthermore, around a third of these deals in both
value and volume terms have involved target companies in Europe.
The European sector also remains a particularly attractive In an attempt to delve deeper into some of the seismic forces
arena for private equity funds and other associated financial shaping the European healthcare market, we commissioned
investors, who are drawn by Europe’s ageing population mergermarket to investigate the shifting M&A landscape
and the supply demand imbalance found especially in the as charted by their proprietary deal database. At the same
services sector. To illustrate this one can look over the time, mergermarket journalists were given access to leading
past three years, where almost half of all financial buyouts healthcare experts from GE to talk about their views on
involving healthcare companies have been based in Europe. the key industry drivers within the various segments of the
Furthermore, post credit crunch, forward deal prospects look industry. We have also used this report to present three case
resilient, especially in the mid market (