Bain Capital buys majority stake in Plasma Resources UK for $349 mn

Private equity firm Bain Capital yesterday agreed to buy a majority stake in Plasma Resources UK (PRUK), the blood plasma business owned by the British government, for £230 million ($349 million).

Bain Capital, which was founded in 1984 by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, will buy an 80 per cent stake in the Hertfordshire-based company, while the UK Department of Health will retain a 20 per cent share.

The sale will add to the list of companies being offloaded by the UK government, including the nearly 500-year old postal service Royal Mail and the helicopter Search and Rescue, which will be run from 2016 by Texas-based firm Bristow in a £1.6-billion contract.

PRUK is a major supplier of blood to the UK National Health Service and also supplies blood plasma to several international health bodies.

It also owns a US-based plasma supply company called DCI Biologicals Inc and operates a production facility in the UK called Bio Products Laboratory Ltd.

UK health minister, Dan Poulter, said, ''This deal will ensure that patients will have access to high quality plasma products for years to come and it is good news that Bain are investing in medicine and the life science industry in the UK.''

Devin O'Reilly, managing director of Bain Capital in London, said, ''We have completed over 50 healthcare investments in companies such as HCA and we will ensure that all of this experience and expertise is applied to building PRUK into a true global leader.''

Robin Marshall, managing director of Bain Capital in the UK, said that the firm would invest in PRUK to ''increase production capacity, refurbish and maintain the existing facilities, develop new products and expand the company's international reach.''

But critics have warned the government that Bain Capital was not the right company to own the PRUK.

Lord Owen, the former health minister, had earlier this year written to Prime Minister David Cameron to stop the sale of PRUK.

''In 1975, against some resistance from those guarding the finances of the DHSS budget, I decided as minister of health to invest in self-sufficiency in the UK for blood and blood products,'' he wrote.

''I now believe this country is on the point of making exactly the same mistake again. The world plasma supply line has been in the past contaminated and I fear it will almost certainly continue to be contaminated,'' Lord Owen's letter said.