Business as usual after private equity firm Blackstone acquires Asclepius

Private equity firm Blackstone has acquired Asclepius, after the two founder-directors of the medical recruiter sold their stakes in the business.
Mon, 28 Oct 2013Private equity firm Blackstone has acquired Asclepius, after the two founder-directors of the medical recruiter sold their stakes in the business.

Asclepius now becomes part of Independent Clinical Services (ICS), the medical staffing division of Blackstone.

Details of the deal have not been disclosed. However, a source close to Blackstone tells Recruiter that the two founder directors of Asclepius, which began life as The Pathology Group, Zack Feather and Louie Evans, sold their stakes in the company in the past few weeks, and are now employees.

Following the deal, an Asclepius spokesperson tells recruiter.co.uk: “It is business as normal.”
 
Feather did not respond to recruiter.co.uk’s request for comment, while Evans was unavailable.  

The deal comes only seven years after Feather and Evans set up The Pathology Group.

The Pathology Group topped the 2011 Recruiter Fast 50 list of the UK’s fastest growing staffing firms in 2011, and is also a multiple past winner at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence, winning Best Healthcare/Medical Recruiter and Best Newcomer.

This is the second major deal in the healthcare staffing sector involving Blackstone in recent years. In November 2010, ICS merged with Pulse.

Tim Evans, managing director of Boxington Corporate Finance, tells recruiter.co.uk that private equity is a much more natural fit than US healthcare recruiters for UK staffing companies.

“Healthcare is a much more national market, and therefore cross-border M&A is notoriously slow and thin,” says Evans.

Asclepius is made up of a number of constituent companies operating within various healthcare niches: A&E Agency, Pathology Group, General Medicine Group, Psychiatry People, Surgical People, and Asclepius Managed Service.


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