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The Irish Infrastructure Fund has completed the sale of Irish primary care centre developer and operator Valley Healthcare to UK international investor and asset manager John Laing Group.
The deal, which was first confirmed in December, has now been approved by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
In what is the largest single investment by John Laing Group, the company has acquired a portfolio of three assets from AMP Capital, the infrastructure manager of the IIF, the company confirmed.
The assets are the Convention Centre Dublin, Ireland’s only purpose-built convention centre, which has an 8,000-person capacity; Towercom, Ireland’s largest independent telecommunications tower company, with a nationwide portfolio of 409 towers; plus Valley Healthcare.
Valley Healthcare is Ireland’s largest developer and operator of primary care centres and has a portfolio of 20 centres in operation and leases all operating centres to the Irish Health Service Executive. The company said that a number of new centres are also in development.
The state-backed fund was established by Irish Life Investment Managers in 2011 and is now managed by London-based InfraBridge.
In 2011, IIF received a €250M “cornerstone” minority investment from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, then known as the National Pension Reserve Fund, meaning ISIF is now due a share of the return released from the sale.
“Valley Healthcare has delivered a strong realised return for the investors in the IIF while contributing to the delivery of local health services across Ireland. We are pleased that it will benefit from being part of a large global infrastructure group and wish them every success in the future,” Irish Life Investment Managers CEO Patrick Burke said in a news release.
“The company [Valley Healthcare] enjoys a strong market position uncorrelated with economic cycles and the transaction builds on our extensive experience in the social infrastructure sector,” John Laing acting CEO and Chief Financial Officer Jamie Christmas said.
At the time of the acquisition being announced last year, Christmas said that John Laing was “excited by the chance to invest in Ireland” and said that the company “expects to see a pipeline of further investment opportunities”.
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