By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
A giant of the American healthcare industry has teamed up with the former owner of Southern Cross, the collapsed care-home group, to take control of the debts of another of Britain's biggest private operators.
I have learnt that HCP, which has a market value of more than $24bn, has swooped to buy 30% of the junior debt of Barchester Healthcare, which employs more than 17,000 people at over 200 locations across the UK.
The deal, which was finalised this week, involved HCP acquiring roughly £175m of the borrowings of Barchester's property empire.
It bought the debt at a discount from a vehicle called Isobel, which is a joint venture between Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Blackstone, the buyout firm.
Blackstone, which sold out of Southern Cross several years before its collapse led to a political outcry in 2011, has separately bought just over 20% of the Barchester property company's junior debt from Lloyds Banking Group, the other state-backed UK lender.
The private equity group and HCP are understood to be working together on achieving a consensual restructuring of Barchester's £1.5bn debt mountain ahead of a deadline this autumn.
Barchester's board is understood to be pleased with HCP's move because of its reputation in the US industry, insiders said today. Earlier this year, HCP, which is structured as a tax-efficient real estate investment trust (REIT), bought a big position in the debts of Four Seasons Healthcare, another British firm.
Barchester's homes have about 10,000 residents, and is well-known in the City for being partly-owned by the racing tycoons John Magnier and JP McManus, who were instrumental players in the takeover of Manchester United eight years ago.
Like many healthcare companies with substantial property assets, Barchester's debt problems began during the boom when its real estate and operating companies were separated.
Unlike at Southern Cross, however, the care homes would not be impacted even if the property arm was unable to repay its debts because the two are ring-fenced from one another.
Southern Cross was at one point Britain's biggest care-home operator with 750 sites but ran into financial difficulties and eventually collapsed in 2011.
Barchester, Blackstone, Lloyds and RBS all declined to comment.
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