Sovereign exits city & County healthcare group

Sovereign Capital has sold domiciliary care provider City & County Healthcare Group in a management buy-out backed by private equity firm Graphite Capital for an undisclosed sum. Earlier press reports had indicated a price tag of around £120m, but that is likely to have been more of a hope than an expectation since it would have taken the asset-light company’s value into 12 times EBITDA territory, based on the £9.9m EBITDA revealed in its annual accounts to March 2013. A possibility of a stock market float had been suggested, but came to nothing.