Year: 2020
Winner: Grupo Notre Dame Intermédica (GNDI) purchases Clinipam
São Paulo-based healthcare Grupo Notre Dame Intermédica (GNDI) made 14 acquisitions in the course of 2020. The odds were not bad then that one of them would be selected as the Domestic M&A Deal of the Year by LatinFinance.
The honour fell to the purchase of Clinipam, a health services provider based in Curitiba, in a deal that enabled GNDI to expand its geographical presence in the Brazilian market.
“GNDI is going through a process of profound transformation, in terms of market positioning and upgrading of our facilities,” said CEO Irlau Machado Filho. “But we have always been much focused on São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and Clinipam was the best possible partner for us to expand into Southern Brazil.”
Clinipam added 351,000 health insurance policyholders, as well as 2 hospitals and more 30 other medical facilities to GNDI’s portfolio. It has a strong presence in Curitiba, the capital of the wealthy Paraná state, and in some parts of Santa Catarina, another Southern state. GNDI now owns 27 hospitals and more than 200 other medical facilities and has 6.3 million policyholders.
In November 2019, after a long courting, GNDI agreed to pay BRL2.6 billion for Clinipam. It was not the only firm interested in the acquisition, and the price amounted to more than 26 times EBITDA, according to Santander CIB, which advised the sellers.
The valuation reflects the aggressive wave of consolidation under way in Brazil’s private healthcare sector, a trend well represented by GNDI, which in 2019 had already made 9 acquisitions. The company’s M&A team has evaluated 380 potential targets in its expansion drive, and about ten potential deals, at the moment, are under discussion, Machado Filho said.
He added that the COVID-19 pandemic has added some urgency to some of those negotiations.
“We have striven to widen coverage to our users, so we have accelerated acquisition processes,” Machado Filho said. – LF
SPONSOR: Grupo Notre Dame Intermédica
BANKS: Branco Bradesco, Citi, Itau BBA, JPMorgan, Santander
LAW FIRMS: Lefosse Advogados; Pinheiro Neto Advogados
All supporting financial institutions and law firms were transmitted to LatinFinance by the award category winners. For updates please email awards@latinfinance.com