Apax heralds stronger market with £975m takeover of Marken

THE UK private equity industry saw its biggest deal in more than a year yesterday as Apax Partners announced it was snapping up a firm for £975 million.

The takeover heralds a bounce back in private equity activity after the credit crunch and financial crisis put the sector's deal-making on hold.

Apax said it had agreed to buy a majority stake in pharmaceutical firm Marken – which primarily transports blood samples in clinical trials – from Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), with aims to complete the deal by early next year. Marken has a string of operations around the world including a site in Edinburgh.

The acquisition is the largest since Lion Capital's 1.1 billion buy-out of frozen food company FoodVest announced last July, according to figures from deal tracking firm Dealogic.

It is thought that Apax has bought a stake of about 67 per cent in Marken, with the management retaining the remaining equity.

Apax said it was the group's biggest deal for more than a year and only its second acquisition for nearly 18 months.

Ben Harding, spokesman for the private equity firm, said: "It's been pretty lean times for most private equity firms.

"But debt markets are coming back aggressively and people are acting quicker on deals."

He added: "It does look like it's coming back and that's largely to do with greater availability of finance and visibility of company earnings."

The deal marks the latest in a string of takeovers for Marken, which was previously owned by private equity firm 3i before a management buy-out backed by ICG in 2007. Before 3i, Marken was owned by German post office Deutsche Post.

The financial crisis has put paid to many of the megadeals seen before the troubles hit, such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts's 11.1bn takeover of health and beauty retailer Alliance Boots.

But Harding said that improving conditions were expected to see an increase in deals and size of takeover, with the start of 2010 set to be a busy one for the sector.

Marken has offices in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Milan, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing.