GIC teams with private equity on stake in healthcare marketing agency Klick

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC has partnered with personal fairness to take a minority stake in Klick Well being, valuing the healthcare advertising and marketing company that labored on this yr’s Tremendous Bowl industrial for Aspirin at virtually $2.5bn.Below the phrases of the deal, GIC, one of many world’s greatest institutional buyers, and healthcare-focused personal fairness group Lyndon Capital Companions will purchase out a minority stake owned by rival agency GTCR, two folks briefed on the matter stated. Klick’s two Canadian co-founders will retain a controlling shareholding within the firm.The settlement is the most recent in a string of personal equity-backed healthcare offers, which has confirmed to be a busy sector for mergers and acquisition exercise this yr regardless of a wider slowdown in mid-market personal fairness transactions.GIC and Chicago-based Lyndon’s deal values the Toronto-based enterprise at practically $2.5bn, or round 18 occasions earnings, which quantity to greater than $130mn a yr, the folks stated. Klick confirmed the minority stake sale to the Monetary Instances after being approached for remark.Based in 1997, Klick has helped a big roster of drugmakers together with pharmaceutical group Bayer and biotech Biohaven develop launch methods and advertising and marketing campaigns for brand spanking new medicines. Most lately, Klick labored on Bayer’s Tremendous Bowl TV industrial for aspirin, which aimed to handle denial amongst Gen Xers and millennials over coronary heart illness. Regardless of the highest US well being official Robert F Kennedy Jr’s expressed want to ban pharmaceutical promoting and the chaos he has created throughout the Meals and Drug Administration, the US medicines regulator, personal equity-backed corporations serving the pharmaceutical business have been a preferred goal for offers. Earlier this yr, Siemens purchased analysis and improvement software program maker Dotmatics from personal fairness group Perception Companions for $5.1bn. Personal fairness group New Mountain Capital in April struck a $3.1bn change of management deal for Actual Chemistry, one other healthcare advertising and marketing group, which introduced in Coller Capital as the most important shareholder. GIC, which has about $800bn of property underneath administration, and Lyndon, which has $12.5bn of property underneath administration, are among the many buyers which have continued to be aggressive within the healthcare sector. The exit additionally marks one more win for GTCR, which earlier this yr agreed to promote its majority stake in Worldpay to World Funds after proudly owning it for lower than two years.Within the first half of this yr, there have been a complete of $67bn of healthcare offers within the Americas area, up from $58bn value of offers within the second half of 2024. That’s down, although, on the $99bn of offers within the first half of that yr, in accordance with a PwC evaluation of LSEG information.