Germany's Fresenius Medical makes 2 acquisitions worth $2.09 billion

Germany's Fresenius Medical Care, the world's largest dialysis company, today unveiled two acquisitions in the US worth $2.09 billion - Liberty Dialysis Holdings Inc for $1.7 billion and American Access Care Holdings, for $385 million.

Mercer Island, Washington-based Liberty Dialysis, the third largest private dialysis company in the US, operates 260 clinics with annual revenues of about $1 billion.

Liberty Dialysis, which is backed by private equity firms Bain Capital and KRG Capital Partners, has seen quick revenue growth since its 2002 founding, by an average 20 per cent to 25 per cent a year, far outpacing the market's 4 to 5 per cent average.

The deal is worth about $1.7 billion, including debt.

Homburg-based Fresenius also acquired Pennsylvania-based American Access, which operates 28 freestanding out-patient centres primarily serving vascular access needs of dialysis patients.

Fresenius, which currently operates 13 vascular access centres, said that the acquisition enables it to achieve critical mass in its vascular access business and has strategic importance by virtue of the scale, resources and operational efficiency it brings to its vascular access operations, at6 a time when the US government proposal to include the type of access and the frequency of access-related infections within the quality outcome component of the dialysis bundled reimbursement system by 2014.