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A US private equity firm has sold a large healthcare and school staffing company for more than $2bn — a bright spot in an otherwise muddled environment for private equity exits.
Private equity firm Vistria Group is near a deal to buy Soliant for roughly $2.5bn, about four years after middle market buyout fund Olympus Partners bought the business, which connects professionals such as nurses, therapists and educators with hospitals and schools.
The sale by Olympus, a middle-market private equity firm based in Connecticut that manages $8.5bn, will lock in a $2.2bn profit for the firm after it initially invested in Soliant in 2020, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Olympus bought Soliant in January 2020 from Swiss human resources business the Adecco Group for $612mn. It has grown rapidly over the past four years, particularly as schools across the US turned to its services to help find staff who could assist remotely. Profits have jumped more than fivefold since Olympus invested up to $230mn a year.
Buyout shops have been stuck holding many of their investments for far longer than expected, as deal volumes have dropped and the market has cooled on initial public offerings. At the start of this year nearly half of private equity portfolio companies had been held for about four years or longer, the highest level since 2012, according to consultancy Bain & Company.
That has starved the pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds that have billions of dollars locked up in private equity of needed distributions. Private equity firms have been sitting on about 28,000 unsold companies worth an all-time high of $3.2tn, Bain said.
Those investors have been pressing buyout groups to understand when their capital may be returned, heightening attention on exits this year. The deal marks a bright spot for Olympus, which will net about six times its initial equity investment, according to a source briefed on the matter. (Debt was used to finance the initial purchase).
The Connecticut-based private equity firm, founded in 1988 by Rob Morris and known for its investments across business services, consumer goods and healthcare, has had success in selling off private investments in recent years.
Last year it struck deals to sell food services supplier Foodware Group and testing company AmSpec for a combined $2bn. The firm has returned more than $5bn to limited partners since 2022, according to a source briefed on the matter.