ECI announces sale of Harmoni

ECI, the UK growth focused mid-market private equity firm, is delighted to announce the sale of healthcare outsourcer Harmoni to CareUK.

Harmoni is a leading UK provider of outsourced healthcare services including Out of Hours, 111, prisoner healthcare and IT services, providing services to over eight million people in the UK.

Harmoni has grown considerably over recent years with annualised sales growth of 39% (CAGR) since 2008 reaching £99m for the year ending 31 March 2012. The company almost tripled its workforce over the same period of time.

Harmoni was a successful spinout from a former ECI healthcare investment, WCI Group, which in 2006 was split into two businesses; Harmoni and WCI Consulting. WCI Consulting provided project-based consulting in the life sciences industry to help clients simplify processes to improve 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 commented:

“ECI is delighted with the final exit from WCI Group following the previous realisation of WCI Consulting in 2011. 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.”

Sean Whelan

Managing Director of ECI and on the board of WCI Group

ECI Sector Credentials:

ECI has made a number of very successful healthcare investments during the past decade. The combination of healthcare and technology has been of particular interest to ECI’s healthcare team, with current investments in Clinisys, the leading supplier of Laboratory Information Systems (LIS) in Europe supporting medical diagnostics and pathology services, and Ascribe, a UK market leader in providing clinical solutions for secondary care. ECI has further healthcare investments in the assisted living and medical technologies sector with Premier Care and AKW Medicare.

“We have had significant success over the last ten years across different parts of the healthcare sector, including technology, services and products. As an investor backing businesses in growth markets, healthcare clearly remains a sector of continued interest and we are keen to build on our track record of success to back other healthcare companies”.

Sean Whelan

ECI

For more information on ECI’s healthcare investments please visit: /sectors/healthcare.go

For further information please contact:

ECI Partners

Sean Whelan, Managing
Director
Tel: +44 (0) 20 76061000

Cubitt Consulting

Simon Brocklebank-Fowler / James
Isola
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7367 5100

Notes to Editors

About ECI Partners:

Founded in 1976, ECI is one of the leading UK mid-market private equity firms. With offices in London and Manchester, ECI specialises in management buyouts, buyins and development capital deals with companies valued between £10 million to £150 million.

Specialising in TMT, business services, industrial, healthcare and consumer companies, ECI has sold over 85 investments with a total value of over £2.5 billion since 1990.

ECI remains a natural partner for companies with growth potential and ambition.

ECI Partners is committed to supporting growth at the companies it backs: an important feature of ECI’s operating capability is the Commercial Team which has been engaged with both new and existing investments in the ECI portfolio. The team supports 100 day planning programmes and also focuses on strategic development projects, ranging from marketing and sales effectiveness to international expansion opportunities. The team partners with management to help accelerate growth, bringing to bear both dedicated resources and the networks and contacts developed by ECI Partners over the past three decades.

ECI announces sale of Harmoni

About the author

Sean Whelan