“We are studying the possibility of selling a 20-30 percent minority package. There have been several offers over time, worth some €100 million. The Marcus family will maintain a controlling share and will never forego its position as majority shareholder,” Mihai Marcu, founder and Chairman of the company, told Business Standard. The company official said that the exit is not for financing the enterprise’s development, because the healthcare service provider is not facing problems related to a lack of liquidity for expansion. The company launched vendor due diligence on the market, which involves the testing of possibilities for attracting an investor. “Vendor due diligence is a market study. We cannot say that a deal has been initiated,” Marcu added.
The Marcus own 80 percent of MedLife, with the remaining 20 percent controlled by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s investment division. IFC has right of preemption, but if it approves the transaction, the company will launch a teaser, and interested investors will have access to data in July-August. Mihai Marcu added that the investor will most likely be an investment fund, considering that a strategic investor would be more interested in a majority share package. MedLife posted net sales worth RON 28 million (€7 mln, at an RON 4/€1 exchange rate) in the first quarter of this year, up 73 percent year-on-year. The company estimates €31.5 mln in turnover for the whole of 2009. It has four clinics (three in Bucharest and one in Timisoara), five own laboratories, a medical center in the towns of Cluj-Napoca, Arad, Brasov, Ploiesti, and Navodari, and a private hospital in Bucharest. The local private health market is estimated at €400 mln.
