Avenue Hospital gets Sh1.6bn expansion loan
Avenue hospital in Kisumu. The IFC plans to fund, though a loan, the healthcare provider's expansion to the tune of Sh1.62billion.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) plans to award a Sh1.62billion ($13.4million) loan to Avenue Group to help the healthcare provider expand its diagnostic services, expand its clinic network and refinance existing debt.
Avenue is wholly owned by the Evercare Health Fund, a private equity fund managed by Texas Pacific Group (“TPG”) whose investors include TPG Rise Fund, IFC, CDC Group, the United States International Development Finance Corporation, Philips, Medtronic, and the Gates Foundation.
Evercare operates an integrated healthcare delivery platform in emerging markets across South Asia and Africa.
“The proposed IFC investment seeks to support Avenue Group Limited (“Avenue” or the “Group”) scale up its secondary and tertiary care offering through enhancements to its diagnostic capacity, expansion of its clinic network, the construction of a new hospital wing at Parklands, Nairobi, and refinance its existing short and long-term debt,” the IFC said in a disclosure.
Avenue Group is among hospitals and clinics in Kenya whose management was taken over last year by the TPG-backed Evercare health care fund.
Evercare took over the management of Kenyan hospitals and clinics previously managed by scandal-hit Dubai-based fund Abraaj and plans to expand its presence in its five key markets including Kenya.
Abraaj collapse
Abraaj’s health fund Kenyan portfolio was made up of 18 clinics and 10 hospitals that provide over 700 patient beds.
The fund had invested in Nairobi Women’s Hospital, Avenue Hospital, Metropolitan Hospital, and Ladnan Hospital among others all of which are now under the ownership and management of Evercare.
TPG signed a deal in 2019, to take over and manage Abraaj’s $1 billion (about Sh121 billion) healthcare fund offering relief for the Kenyan medical outlets where the fund had pumped in billions of shillings.
Abraaj, once the Middle East and North Africa’s biggest buyout funds, collapsed following a row with investors over the use of money in the healthcare fund.
Abraaj had a row with investors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the IFC over the use of money in the Sh101 billion healthcare fund.
