Highly Leveraged Investments in Health Care: Growing Concerns and Risks

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Written by Scott Becker, JD, CPA

Wednesday, 09 July 2008

Health Care services and device companies have become a core target for private equity investors. In recent years there has been a binge in the private equity acquisition of health care companies valued between one billion and twenty billion dollars. Private equity funds are eager to seek investments that create value for their investors and are investing where they believe the opportunity for value creation exists. Generally health care companies have assets that can be used as debt collateral and investors see fragmented markets as opportunities for consolidation, operational improvement and cost-cutting.

The benefits of leveraged transactions in health care, if done right, can provide tremendous returns on investment for equity holders. In essence, with small overall increases in enterprise value a fund can double and triple the investor?s returns on investment equity. The challenge to leveraged investing is that if revenues decrease rather than increase, an already constricted cash flow can be overwhelmed by the required debt and interest payments.

For a discussion regarding these leveraged transactions, download Highly Leveraged Investments in Health Care: Growing Concerns and Risks (PDF).