ECI sells healthcare outsourcer Harmoni to CareUK
The UK growth focused mid-market private equity company ECI has announced the sale of healthcare outsourcer Harmoni to CareUK. Harmoni provides outsourced healthcare services including Out of Hours, 111, prisoner healthcare and IT services, and also provides services to more than eight million people in UK.
Harmoni has grown significantly in the recent years with annualized sales growth of 39% since 2008 and reached £99m for the year ending 31 March 2012.
During the same period, Harmoni also tripled its workforce. The healthcare outsourcer was also a spinout from the former ECI healthcare investment, WCI Group, which in 2006 was split into 2 businesses namely WCI Consulting and ECI Healthcare.
WCI Consulting provides project-based consulting in the life sciences industry. It helps clients simplify the processes to improve the performance and assure compliance and was sold to Take Solutions, a listed Indian technology company in January 2011.
Sean Whelan, Managing Director of ECI and on the board of WCI Group said, “ECI is delighted with the final exit from WCI Group following the previous realization of WCI Consulting in 2011.” Mr. Whelan also said, “Andrew Gardner and his team at Harmoni have made fantastic progress growing the business over the past few years, and it is now well-positioned to take advantage of the changing market conditions in healthcare, specifically around the new 111 services.”
Mr. Sean also said, “We have had significant success over the last 10 years across different parts of the healthcare sector, including technology, services and products. As an investor backing businesses in growth markets, healthcare clearly remains of continued interest and we are keen to build on our track record of success to back other healthcare companies.”
ECI is the founding companies of the modern private equity industry in the UK. It has also been an active investor in private companies since it was set up as equity capital for the industry in 1976. ECI has also further healthcare investments in the assisted living and medical technologies sector with Premier Care and AKW Medicare.