Irish billionaires JP McManus, Dermot Desmond and John Magnier are set to receive the lion’s share of a £4 billion-plus (€4.6 billion) sale of the Barchester Healthcare nursing homes business in the UK, in which they have been invested for three decades.
New York-listed healthcare property investment group Welltower is in advanced talks to acquire Barchester and a related company, called Limecay Limited, that owns the group’s portfolio of physical nursing homes, sources say.
An announcement could come as soon as Monday when Welltower is due to report quarterly results.
Barchester is the UK’s second-largest nursing home operator with a portfolio more than 260 care homes and six hospitals. It employed 17,200 at the end of last year.
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Sky News reporter Mark Kleinman posted on X late on Thursday how he was “hearing” that Welltower was preparing to announce a takeover of the business.
A Barchester spokesman declined to comment, while representatives for Welltower did not respond to a request for comment.
Barchester and Limecay each have little underlying debt when intergroup loans are stripped out.
Barchester owed £103.6 million to related parties and had £366.4 million of external loans at the end of last year, according to its latest accounts filed recently with Companies House, London.
Limecay has £1.09 billion of loan notes issued to its parent company in the British Virgin Islands. These are due for repayment at the end of 2027, its most recent accounts state. Loan notes can be a tax-efficient way to structure investments. Limecay’s property portfolio had a gross value of £1.91 billion at the end of December.
Barchester and the related properties came close to being sold six years ago to Macquarie for £2.5 billion before the Australian financial services giant pulled out of the deal, blaming uncertainty caused by Brexit. Welltowers was also among runners and riders in that abandoned sales process.
The Irish tycoons invested in Barchester in 1994, a little over a year after the business was set up by British entrepreneur Mike Parsons. The three are said to be by far the biggest shareholders in the business.
Derrick Smith, part owner of the Coolmore Stud racehorse breeding business in Co Tipperary with John Magnier, also has a stake, along with a number of smaller Irish investors.
The development comes only weeks after Mr Magnier lost a high-profile legal case to buy the Barne Estate in Co Tipperary.
The 751-acre estate was put up for sale in July 2023. Mr Magnier claimed he and the owner, Richard Thomson-Moore, concluded a sale for €15 million on the evening of August 22nd, 2023, and that was a binding commitment. In a High Court ruling, Mr Justice Max Barrett said a sale had not taken place.
Green Street News, a property website, reported last month how the owners of Barchester had hired JP Morgan to handle a fresh sales process.
Barchester’s revenues rose by 11 per cent to £966.8 million, while its operating profit rose by about 25 per cent to £94 million.
Limecay, which receives rent from Barchester, recorded turnover of £125.5 million and operating profit of €125 million after less than €500,000 of operating expenses.
